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A 

SALFORD SALAMANDER 

ANATOMIZED : 

IN J Cfi 

NINE LETTERS 

TO THE 

REV. MELVILLE HORNE, 

CURATE OF ST. STEPHEN'S, SALFORD ; 
WHEREIN ARE EXAMINED AND EXPOSED, THE 

STRANGE DOCTRINES 

attoanctfr agatnst $er jflajestp anir fye people, 

IN 

HIS REVERENCE'S LATE PAMPHLET, 

ENTITLED 

« THE MORAL AND POLITICAL CRISIS 
OF ENGLAND." 



By ARISTARCHUS ANTI-HORNEUS. 



I should think this a gall, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it 

knavery cannot; sure, hide himself in such reverence. 

Shakspeare. 



LONDON: 
PRINTED FOR EFFINGHAM WILSON, 

ROYAL-EXCHANGE. 
1821. 






r3 r. 



J. M'Creery, Tooks-Court, 
Chancery Lane, London. 



*& 

\*<\ 



TO THE 



INSULTED MEMORIES 



OF 



HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE THE THIRD, 



AND 



QL\)t pfticesa Cljarlatte of Bm Cobourg, 

THE AUTHOR, 
(A WARDER ON THE WATCH-TOWERS OF LIBERTY, 

INSCRIBES 

THESE LETTERS. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



THE following Letters, the fruit of leisure hardly 
toon from the severer duties and more pressing calls 
of life, passed the pen of the writer as relaxation from 
the oar of business. They have already made their 
consecutive appearance in a London Weekly Journal, 
commencing with the 30th September, and closing on 
the 6th Dec. 1820: and noxv, revised and partially 
enlarged, are submitted collectively to the public, in 
the hope of rendering some service, however humble, 
to the right English cause of civil and religious liberty. 
Beyond the public acquaintanceship generated by a 
perusal of the zvork which has called forth these his 
opinions, the author is utterly ignorant of his Reverend 
antagonist ; and he is happy in that ignorance, — as 
knowledge more particular and more private naturally 
affects the currency of argument and expression, and 
his business is with principles, not with persons. Pub- 
lic considerations alone have induced his public men- 
tion of other characters ; nor is he conscious of having 
in a single instance travelled out of the record of pro- 
priety — in touching upon names, and words, and deeds, 
which now belong as positively to the people, as any 
particle of the common history of our common country. 
In the testing days zvhich are fast approaching, the 
strain will be laid upon LOYALTY among other qua- 
lities and professions, and whether the ultra and ex- 
clusive will stand the trial, remains to be seen. That 
his Reverend friend, however, may not in the mean time 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

misconstrue the ideas by him annexed to this sadly- 
warped and much-abused term, and that the unthink- 
ing who blindly follow the interested and corrupt, may 
be brought to reflect on the value of the substance instead 
of vainly chasing its shadow, — the author is led to give 
a somewhat extended — but, in his opinion, — a conclu- 
sive and constitutional definition of this Protean word. 
It occurs in the works of the Rev. Samuel Johnson ; — 
a divine, zoho sealed with no common suffering the 
triumphant testimony he had the honor to bear to the 
truth of the Good Old Cause, and was moreover some 
time chaplain to the illustrious William Lord Russel, — 
a patriot nobleman, basely murdered under the forms of 
law, by the conjoint demonism of the idtra-loyalty of 
1683, and the merciful accomplishments of Charles 
the Licentious, a King who could do no wrong. 

'The word loyal is a term of law, and is indifferently applied 
to things as well as persons. So, a loyal judgment is a judg- 
ment according to law, and is opposed to a false judgment. A 
loyal contract is a lawful bargain. A man buys a horse in a 
market, and then he has a loyal title — a legal title — to him. So 
again, a person behaves himself according to law, and observes 
the laws of the land, and then he is a loyal man — he is ' legalis 
' homo' — as a juryman is required to be, — that is, such an one 
as cannot be challenged for a criminal or a breaker of the laws. 
And in case a man's behaviour be according to law, it is loyal, 
whether it respect a superior or an inferior. Action nest autre 
chose que loial demand de son droit : an action is nothing else but the 
loyal demand of a man's right. Mirror, p. 115. And p. 122, a 
serjeant-at-law shall not use any deceits in his practice, nor con*, 
sent to them, mes loyalment maintiendra le droit de son client, fyc. ; 
but shall loyally maintain the right of his client ; so that it be not 
overthrown by any folly, negligence, or default of his. From 
hence it follows, that loyalty can have no other rule or measure 
but the law : for though some men love to have confused notions 
of things, and speak of loyalty as if it were a thing in the clouds, 
and some abstruse matter over our heads, — yet it appears to be 
a plain thing and of easy comprehension, — for it is nothing else 
but conformity to the laws. The plain English of Loyalty is 
Lawfulness ; and it is utterly impossible that there should be any 
other test or touchstone — any other measure or standard — of 



ADVERTISEMENT. Vll 

lawfulness, but the law itself. For, if there had been no law, as 
there had been no trangression nor violation of it, so there had 
been no loyalty nor conformity to it ; and therefore, loyalty 
against law — is a contradiction, — it is obedience made up of dis- 
obedience. The law is that which makes the King our Liege 
Lord, and us his Liege People ; and accordingly, both Prince and 
People are mutually sworn to the keeping of it; and our allegi- 
ance binds us to an obedience according to law, and no other- 
wise. To obey the King himself contrary to law, is disloyalty; 
and to disobey the King in obedience to the laws, is loyalty. If 
it be not thus, then all the Judges of England, for these three hun- 
dred and forty years and upwards have been all sworn to be dis- 
loyal ; for they are sworn to * proceed according to law, though 
■ the King, by his letters, or writs under the great seal, or under the 
' little seal, or by his own mouth, should command them the con~ 

* trary: 2. 18. 20. Edw. III. Fortesc, c. 51. ' Etiamsi Rex per 
1 liter as suas aut ore tenus contrarium jusserit.' And so in the 
Court-Leet ; when we swear, that ' we will be true Liegemen, and 
' true faith and troth bear to our Sovereign Lord the King/ and that 
'we shall no felony nor treason commit, nor thereunto assent, and shall 
' be obedient to all the King's Majesty's laws, precepts, and process, 

* issuing from the same,' — it is plain, that we do not promise any 
obedience to precepts or process which are contrary to law — or 
besides the law — and not grounded upon it : no, that is no part of 
our allegiance, which you plainly see is limited to the laws.' 

The trial and examination of a late libel, intitled* * A Neio 
' Test of the Church of England's Loyalty/ (Circa 16840 



London, 
ldth Jan, 1821. 



LETTER I. 



Reverend Sir, 
A much respected acquaintance, in the kind hope of reform- 
ing my present opinions, having requested me to read your ' Mo- 
ral and Political Crisis of England,' I take the 
liberty — as a very humble member of the middle class in so- 
ciety to which you especially address yourself — of submitting 
to you, whom it most nearly concerns, the following remarks 
illustrative of the effect produced on my judgment by an atten- 
tive perusal of your lucubrations. Confessing the severity of 
your various animadversions on the conduct of her Majesty, 
you plead ( loyalty' in justification; — allow me, in return, to 
claim equal privilege on behalf of the strictures applied in 
these pages. In boldly speaking that which I strongly feel, 
and in treating with the frankness of an English spirit, some 
interesting topics, around which you have elaborately folded 
the dusky cloak of mystery, I shall lay — what some may deem — 
a rude and unhallowed hand on the ark of your recorded senti- 
ments; but human touch, be it remembered, cannot pollute 
the sanctuary of right reason,* nor can human voice profane 
it : if your principles are sound, my weak arm cannot shake 
them, — if your deductions are clear, and your argument per- 

* As orthodox charity, Rev. Sir, may prompt you to trip me ere I am 
fairly balanced on the ice, I shall take the proffered arm of my friend 
Ciceiio, which, " though a Pagan's," is no despicable support under cir- 
cumstances. " Est quidem vera lex, Recta Ratio, naturce congruens, dif- 
fusa in omnes, coyistans, sempiternu ; qu<e vocet ad officium jubendo, vrtando a 
fraude deterreat ; qua tamen nee probos frustra jubet aut vetat, nee improbos 
jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nee obrogari fas est, neque derogari ex 
hac aliquid licet, neque iota abrogari potest. Nee vero aut per senatum aut per 
popxdum solvi hac lege possumus. Neque est qucerendus explanator, aut inter- 
nes ejus alius. Nee erit alia lex Roma, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac ; 
sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, una lex, et sempiterna et immortalis con- 
tinebit. Unusque erit communis quasi magister et imperaior omnium, Dels 
ille, legis httjus inventor— disceptator — lator ; cui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, 
ac naluram hominis aspernabitur ; atque hoc ipso luet maximas pcenas, etiam si 
catera supplicia, qua putantur, e^^gent.'' Frag, de Repub. lib. iii. 

B 



% 

feet, my querulous observations are worse than idle : — in short, 
if you suffer at all under the infliction of this commentary, I 
beseech you to bear in mind, that you are not punished for 
your truth. 

Starting with a picturesque paraphrase of the prentice- 
boy's popular truism, ' there never was such times !' and 
straightway mounting your doctrinal Pegasus, you pass instan- 
ter the narrow bounds of the Christian horizon, and dazzle the 
amazed senses of your reader with visions of splendid retro- 
spection, such as never before entered the confined coop of 
my homely experience. Exhibiting our country, ' by the most 
' signal interpositions of Providence brought safe and victori- 
f ous through the most dreadful war ever waged/ ' covered with 
1 glory, intoxicated with joy? and conquering, 'for God 
1 was on our side / — how comes it, Rev. Sir, you do not 
inform us, that before ' God was on our side/ he had been for 
twenty-five years against us? — and, if this is the truth, why 
should you conceal it ? Well, the battle is won, the wars are 
over, you have your songs of gladness and victory — you are 
unquestionably the happiest of mortals, when lo ! the psean of 
triumph is scarcely finished, before you contradict your boast- 
ed felicity in the most amusing way imaginable, telling us very 
gravely, < any thing to the contrary nevertheless notwithstand- 
ing/ that ' neither on the Continent, nor yet in England, had 
' we slain the impious spirit of Jacobinism. That zws yet to 
' he combatted, subdued, and exterminated, by the moral 
! power of our pens,' ' by the strenuous exertions of 
'the clergy/ and by divers other equally excellent means, 
crowned ' by the blessing of the Almighty/ ' especially on the 
' extended operations of a Bible Society of all Christendom' 
Excellent well ! ' But, instead/ — ' the lassitude induced by 
' past exertions/ ' joy/ ' exultation/ ' blind confidence/ ' all 
' conspired to lull us to sleep under the shade of our laurels !' 
And then, while the weary warriors were taking their nap — on 
leafy beds reposing, in stepped 'the evil spirit — dark 
' source of ill!' who ' slept not. With preternatural acti- 
' vity he collected, rallied, reanimated his scattered forces/ 



3 

* reinforced them, devised new modes of annoyance; and, at 
f this moment, we see every element of corruption and crime, 
' not only arrayed, but in active co-operation against Church 

* and State, God and man!' How ' Church and State* may 
come out of the threatening conflict, it were folly to enquire ; 
but I would fain learn of your Reverence, what has * man' to 
fear with ' God on his sideV Surely, Sir, you must origi- 
nally have devised this fanciful illustration of the Manichasan 
duality, as a travesty on Paradise Lost, or some of the Romish 
legends, for it bears not the least trace of the singleness and 
simplicity of Christianity. It is a picture coloured by a de- 
basing and flagrant abuse of the name of the Supreme Being, 
and is too shocking for the contemplation of piety. It is a 
sin against the first commandment, — calculated to make religion 
hang her head in shame, and to raise a blush on the manly 
cheeks of truth and reason. 

You next tell us, that from the Reformation, liberty, l a 
1 plant of native growth, 1 * began to warm England with her 

* sacred energies ; but as my dull brain cannot comprehend this 
vegetative process, I must wait your second edition with its 
explanatory notes. Your historical review of the period down 
to the expulsion of James, demands an acknowledgment of its 
general impartiality and intelligibility, but in passing the me- 
morable date of 1688, I am diverted in marking how adroitly 
you escape the mention of that 

Word of fear, 

Unpleasing to a ' parson's ' ear — 

that odious word, Revolution, and its peculiar and no less 
odious epithet, — The Glorious Revolution. 6 Thenfirst 
' commenced,* you say, ' the full reign of English law and li- 
' berty* It has been transmitted unimpaired/tow father 
'to son, as the undoubted and unalienable birthright of every 
' Englishman.' Verily, Sir, you are a most facetious reasoner : 
one half of your book seems expressly written to confute the 
other. You talk of * unimpaired] of entire and perfect trans- 
mission, — and surely if you have proved one single fact, it is 
that your vaunted empire ' of English law and liberty is at 



4 

this hour ' in most admired disorder/ Whether at any time 
or times in the last hundred years our code has suffered dete- 
rioration, or whether in that period the Algerine tables have 
been improved, I canuot stop to examine ; but you will hardly 
dare to contravene my averment, that in some points of liberty- 
practice at least, there is now a marvellous affinity between 
them, unknown in the olden time. 

In your sixth page it is stated, i We enjoy liberty of the 
( purest kind, of the noblest and best established root. It is 
( the glory of our own country, and the praise and envy of all 
' others: 9 (What will transatlantic Jonathan say to this?) 'but,' 
that from the Prince, from the Parliament itself from afac- 
1 tious, unprincipled Opposition, and from a licentious and in- 
4 furiate Populace, we have alternately much to fear i' Pretty 
proof this of the fine quality of our staple! Happv illustra- 
tion of the superlative purity and excellence ' of English law 
1 and liberty !' — and then you broach the very sensible doctrine, 
that ' the King and his ministers cannot tyrannize, but 
' through the medium of Parliament ; and the opinion of the 
1 sound part of the people — the virtue and piety of the land — 
* will ever operate as a powerful check on Parliament/ and 
thereby secure our freedom. But what a false assumption is 
this ! — contradicted even in your antecedent page by the damn- 
ing fact, that the Second Charles actually tyrannized through 
the medium, and under the sanction of a Parliament, — nobly, 
yet ineffectually struggling against his abominations. And if a 
resisting Parliament could not protect the national liberty, how 
shall it fare under obsequious Houses? Did the national ( wr- 
1 tue and piety control the tyranny of that grandson of the Bri- 
tish Solomon ? Or has ' the opinion of the sound part of the 
' people/ insured our salvation in these days of boroughmonger- 
ing infamy, and liberticide corruption ? Let Castiereagh, the 
patron saint of the alien act, answer : let Sidmouth, the 
guardian-angel of the jail and prison-house, answer. As to 
the ' one immense grave/ into which were once tumbled, 
' King, Crown, Lords, Church and State/ and your fears of 
a repetition of that extraordinary specimen of wholesale sexton- 



*work — I religiously believe in the possibility of suck consum- 
mation. The same causes will assuredly produce the same 
effects: and if oilier Lauds persecute, and other Charles's 
play the tyrant, we may rationally expect to see their plague- 
spotted carcases thrown into the pest cart, and wheeled off to 
the pit, with as little ceremony as before. But, in your lack 
of consideration, ' God warn us!' — why do you liken the 
stormy 1640 — 1650, to these piping times of pleasantry and 
peace ? Are you not at one breath alike libelling priestianity 
and royalty ? Be advised : accept my friendly caution, and 
purge your pages of this drossy stuff; — lest, invulnerable as 
you may think yourself, that Paris of lawyers — Mr. Attorney 
General — strike your heel with an ex-officio. 

It is laughable to read your sentiments of the Opposition, 
(pp. 7 and 8.) They are 'factious' forsooth, ' unprincipled \ 
1 and organized on system to involve by the foulest of con- 
' spiracies, themselves and their country in one common 
' ruin' Why, Sir, you represent l Gentlemen opposite' as even 
more stupid and wicked than the ragamuffin radicals ! These 
sly rogues, remembering well that l exchange is uo robbery,' 
intend merely to take the good things at present enjoyed by 
the clerical and aristocratical orders, and to turn over to the 
reverend, right reverend, noble, and most noble destitutes, 
their own proper rags and wretchedness ; they would take Ti- 
mon at his word, and execute his orders to the very letter, — 

Raise me this beggar, and denude that lord : 
The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, 
The beggar —native honor ;— 

thus giving, what the Harrow-alarmist Cunningham would 
call, ' a practical comment on the doctrine of Reform ;' and 
evincing, moreover, something of the natural instinct of self- 
love, and self-preservation ; — but, that the Opposition, drawn 
almost entirely out of f the higher classes* should ' turn their 
backs on themselves,' and be thus madly bent on suicide, is a 
most lamentable story ; and surely it would not be accounted 
a supererogatory act of Christian charity, were you, Rev. Sir, 
to take out a statute of lunacy against the whole body, and 



have them safely * housed under lock' in Bedlam ; as you 
would thereby save your country, and likewise their precious 
souls, which, by your report, stand in fearful peril of damnation. 
I fully agree with you at page 8, that a certain House often 
resembles a beargarden, and that its f dignity, authority, and 

* influence, are wasting away.' But when you assure us, that ' the 
f lower orders are ripening fast for revolt and revolution/ you 
should not have pocketed the cause, — for l this effect defective 

* cometh by cause ;' — you should have proclaimed, that it was the 
glowing sun of corruption— aye, corruption in its meridian — that 
was ripening this harvest of rebellion. With a naivety, ' to vulgar 
souls unknown ;' — you then ask, * Can the populace philoso- 
' phize on the principles of man W I answer, they can jargonize 
as well as the parish priest of Salford ; f it is easy as lying/ The 
calumniated people, the ' base populace,' the ' swinish multi- 
tude/ the ' lower classes/ of this f church and king' island, 
can philosophize sufficiently well; they know when and 
why, and where the shoe pinches ; and if there is 
not philosophy in this, well may the ' rude mechanicals' in- 
quire, - 

What are they 
That charge their breaths against us ? 

This ' most thinking people/ Rev. Sir, understand the tricks 

of their rulers exceedingly well ; they are feelingly alive to their 

grandiose taste — their matchless skill — their juggling that baffles 

description, — they ' can* and do ' make due allowance for 

1 ambition, prejudice, party spirit, and the irritation of the 

' moment ; aye, and they nevertheless \ speak of gentlemen out 

i of parliament as freely as they do of each other in it / yet 

there remains a large balance against the money-takers and 

liberty-compellers of the state ; and it is evident, ' clear as the 

6 sun at noon-day/ that the day of reckoning is at hand ; that 

The hour is approaching, — a terrible hour, — 

and that ' the undoubted and unalienable birthright of every 

1 Englishman' will not much longer remain a bye-word among 

the nations. The people have been roughridden and dragooned 

too long for patient endurance ; but they are patient, (thanks 



to the Bible Society and the Book of Job !) and all that they 
feel acutely is the delay of reform; — but 'it will come 
when it will come :' they pray it may come quickly. I hope 
you understand this; for I would not willingly leave you in 
the dark as to so vital a spring of popular action. 

At p. 9. we get into business — ( hot as we can snp it/ — and 
I find you in Spa-fields : — what a mercy that you were not in 
the far-famed stocking-foot, with the half-score bullets ! Thence 
you are off to the Tower, and on to Westminster Hall, but not 
one word of your friend Castles,— that gentlemanly man of 
sin, that well-dressed, perjured, amiable sojourner in the land 
of social treason, — that honest fellow — 

Broad cloth without, and a * base' heart within. 
Now, Sir, this is rank ingratitude, dishonorable alike to your 
Cloth and your individual character : — but you make a glorious 
dash at Mr. Alderman Wood ; — O yes ! and we shall soon drop 
a grain or two of salt on the tail of this bird, the emblem of 
your absolute wisdom ; — you have not forgotten the nursery in- 
structions in the art of catching tom-tits? it shall be tried 
anon. 

Your next paragraph is a regular furioso movement, and 
rings in our ears stirringly and loudly as ' The Storm' of Stei- 
belt ' From the press, and viva voce, every thing sacred and 

* venerable zva$ assailed. Kings, Princes, Lords, Commons, 

* the army and navy, the church, the bar, judges, juries, and 
' magistrates, were calumniated, belied, and vilified, without 
' feeling, shame, or fear.' Bless us ! here is ' liberty* with a 
vengeance; but what has become of our ' unimpaired lawT 
And, not to speak irreverently of these, or of any other ' sacred' 
items in your comprehensive inventory — what mean ye, Re- 
verend Sir, by ' a sacred and venerable* i army and navy? You 
stump forward hair on end ; ' Property was to be divided, the 

* public debt discharged by bankruptcy, annual parliaments 

* were to be elected by universal suffrage, and no man was to 
1 work more than eight hours in the day/ Fortunately, how- 
ever, 'the Bible stood in their way. It must be 



' disbelieved' And if so, allow me, Reverend Sir, to ask you, 
in what book of the Bible it is written, that were the majority 
of this nation decided on adopting every tittle of this, your 
reasonable and very philosophical hypothesis, they would of- 
fend against the laws of God, by giving it the ( name of ao. 
tion?' Come, come, — cant is at a discount, and mystification a 
drug; kingcraft and priestcraft are going down together to the 
tomb of all the Capulets; and an ounce of candour is worth a 
pound of courtly civility : let me have your biblical reference ; 
give me the book, chapter, and verse, that declares against annual 
parliaments under universal suffrage — give me this alone, and I 
for one will turn Tory — or Turk — if you like, to-morrow. 

As to your ministerial Green-Bag Committees, your ' proof 
1 of a dangerous conspiracy / your suspension of the Habeas 
Corpus act, and your ' other vigorous measures, the less you 
say about these things the better ; experience has cast them on 
the dunghill of legislation, along with much more excellent re- 
fuse, where they stink in the nostrils of the nation. But ' the 
i loyal Alderman Wood! 7 — why, he seems to sit like an incubus 
on your slumbering loyalty. ' Hech ! Sirs, wait a wee, and I 
1 will soon try a conclusion wi' my guid friend Maister Melville, 
< on this muckle crabbit character/ For the present, however, 
my divine friend is most merrily engaged with ' the immortal 
' William Pitt/ and ' his mucMoved Britain/ So then he 
really would have bound Radicalism, as he had once before 
bound Jacobinism, had his life been spared ! Doubtlessly ; and 
when he had so 

bound her 

With Styx nine times round her, 

I question not, but that ' the Evil Spirit' had proved strong- 
er than ever. Jacobinism survived him, and what security can 
you offer, that ' the monstrous form of Radicalism' would have 
' expired beneath the force of his Herculean grasp f Really, 
you should not thus trifle with \ the immortal memory/ such 
paltry attempts at wit fall most gracelessly from your reverend 
pen; nor is it any absolving atonement, to dwell on i his thunder- 



9 

f ing lightning eloquence, 1 a queer description this ! — nor on f the 
1 Briton and the patriot, ' burning in his face, his eyes, and 
(you should have added) his nose. 

Ministers are vastly obliged to you, for the truly loyal report 
you put in against them here ; they were f then, if ever, weak 
' and vacillating,' nay, 'perhaps they thought Radicalism al- 
' ready dead/ and they ' gave proof of ill-judged lenity P I cry 
your mercy, Reverend Sir, for an airing. We shall meet again 
— at Philippi. 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER II. 



Reverend Sir, 
Had those wiseacres, the ministers, consulted you, they had 
quickly been satisfied, that Radicalism was not dead but sleep- 
ing ; for under the magic of your charmed pen, we have * the 
1 Evil Spirit' quickened into action, as suddenly as the floor- 
stretched and motionless clown in the pantomime at there- 
animating touch of the sword of harlequin. The curtain 
now rises, and you treat us with a grand theatrical pageant. 
First come the * Radicals clapping their hands/ and throw- 
ing up 

their caps, 

As they would hang them on the horns o' the moon, 

Shouting their emulation, — 

^nd straining their unused memories in the delivery of the seve- 
ral wise exclamations your prolific brain has supplied to their 
' swinish' ignorance. On this, ' Pandemonium shakes with 
1 reverberated applause/ which shortly * subsiding into silence/ 
amid clouds of involute mystery, and to a vocal accompani- 
ment from the iEneid, uprises the 'grey-headed orator and 
' schoolmaster of Stockport ; and who can restrain his risible 
faculties on reading the comical scraps of sentiment, your genius 
has furnished him withal ? To take your own exact descrip- 
tion of the language in which they are apparelled, it is in truth 
very ' vulgar English/ and had I not evidence in nearly every 

c 



10 



page of your book, of your own proper ability in this line, t 
should have divined that the elegant Ethelston had supplied 
this choice effusion of Lancastrian eloquence. O that the 
curate of St. Stephen's had never 'meddled with a paucity of 
' learning f then had the luckless name of Harrison been spared 
this illegitimate connexion with Home, and satire been robbed 
of at least one proof of the truth of her doctrine, that, * foolery, 
1 Sir, does walk about this 01 b, like the sun ; it shines every - 
' where/ 

You are now ushering in that day of wrath, dies tree ! — the 
memorable l6ih of August, 1819, and your impassioned over- 
ture is a most happy introduction to the damnable doings of 
that treacherous morning. A single strain from this chef 
cTceuvre, may satisfy an ordinary ear, and I copy at random ; 
• Fathers and mothers were sworn to corrupt the infant mind! 7 
Gentle auditor, if this is not the music of the spheres, it will 
certainly suit the orchestras below ; and for the time to come 
thou wilt know where to prick for it, bethinking thee ever to 
ask for ' Home's genuine edition/ as piracy is rife in Pande- 
monium. You have again recourse to your Manichaean 
armoury : the Good Spirit is very properly sent after other busi- 
ness, and the Evil one led forth into action, strengthened with 
infernal enchantments, and fired with preternatural energy, 
while 

on his crest, 

Sits horror plum'd. 

' It is not now in season to repeat a threadwom story] 
how 'pikes were fabricated everywhere ! thousands of pistols 
'publicly sold, and from every part of the town popping in 
6 our ears !' how u every gentleman teas to be killed f how • the 
'peaceful' ' zvere warned by the sermons of ministers, some not 
' zoithout tears of grief!' how ' we knew not whom to trusty 
and 'for many months had suffered the terrors of siege! 9 how 
' we zoere invaded from twenty miles around, by all the dis- 
' loyalty of the country ? how the people marched to the ground 
in military array, and formed in battalia ; how ' the Yeomanry, 
' without striking a blow, surrounded and took the orators/ 



11 

the Demosthenes of the day inclusive; nor how the blood- 
bedewed field of Peterloo was next morning discovered thickly 
bestrewn with stout sticks, pikeshafts, and stones ! — but the 
reader shall be treated with your new version of an old false- 
hood, and here it is. 'That the Riot Act was read, 
' — we can produce not only the oaths of the magistrates who 
1 did read it, but those of their brother-magistrates and others, 
' who did hear them read it, and who complimented one of 
* them, at the moment, for reading it with gStentraphonic 
' voice.' Bravo ! But where, Reverend Sir, were your amiable 
Stentor and his gentle confederates — readers and auditors — dur- 
ing ' good Mr. Hunt's trial at York, when corruption was 
hoarse with calling them ? The poor rogues must surely have 
missed their way, or, mayhap, they had lost their mendacious 
confidence, their altisonant and ' most sweet voices,' or their 
memories ? 1 wait your answer. ' Signor, Non-mi-ricordo/ 
Very well. I cannot doubt it ; and shall, therefore, in charity, 
set down, that during the momentous fortnight in question, 
they were engaged, with lantern and candle — Diogenes-wise, 
in searching after one or other of these special faculties, ' lost 
or mislaid/ What a perfect illustration is this of the nature 
of unproductive labour ! Hapless wanderers ! — unrequited 
seekers ! — foolish — 

And vain as those, who when the moon 
Bright in a crystal river shone, 
Threw casting-nets, as subtly at her, 
To catch and pull her out o' th' water! 

No, my dear Sir, this bar of your otherwise beautiful compo- 
sition is jarringly discordant, notwithstanding your new modu- 
lation, and most learned counterpoint ; it cannot stand ; you 
must question your genius further : and you must shake hands 
and be friends again with Truth, for she has already cast this 
dictum into the Cave of Lies ; — where it rots in goodly com- 
pany, — along with Cunningham's churchly jokes, and the 
more savory creations of the Italian worthies ; with the inno- 
cence-hoping professions — the purity -breathing declamations of 
our law-twisters general, ' Icgum contortores; 9 and the paper 



12 

and parchment treasures of the honest Milan Commis- 
sioners. 

Your inference, that the brave 'yeomanry did not cut their 
' way to the hustings, because they had no orders,' is precious 
logic for the service of \ the higher and middle classes.' As 
well might it be said, ' the quashing of the Oldham inquest was 
* au illegal act — ergo, said inquest was not quashed,' or ' here 
' is a very ridiculous pamphlet — ergo, Parson Home did not 
' write it/ Now, unless you professedly address yourself *, to 
dolts and idiots,' let me intreat you, not to insult your select 
' classes' by the effusion of nonsense like this. It is rank ab- 
surdity, if not worse. Nay, it should seem you had charged 
your alembic with Posts, and Slops, and Couriers ; and then 
puffed off ' the leprous distilment' as the real, genuine, newly 
discovered and never-failing Salford panacea ! Really, good 
Doctor, this is very paltry quackery ; and empiricism is be- 
neath the practice of ' a gentleman by education,' unworthy 
the cultivation of a * constituted guardian of morals.' Ah ! 
Parson, ' you are such another !' 

I pass by your interesting episode, of the Cheshire Yeomanry 
and the dragoons stepping forward to save the one hundred and 
twelve Manchester worthies from the fury of — — tJieir own 
sabres! This touch of the pathetic, however, has my passing 
tear; and I pay the tributary shudder at your l furious storm 

1 of sticks !' ( Jesu, Maria, save us well!' No wonder 

' the terror, confusion, and rout, were indescribable /' But, 
why, Rev. Sir, should you affect surprise, if the voice of your 
country's indignation burst in thunder upon Manchester and 
her infuriate magistracy? It was perfectly natural that such 
effect should follow so villainous a cause, that the sound heads 
and sound hearts of Englishmen should revolt at such hereto- 
fore unheard-of atrocity, and perhaps equally so, that the 
blood-hunters and their savage myrmidons should ' furiously rage 
together,' and madden with disappointment. The jurlgment- 
duy on these barbarous iniquities, I trust, is not far distant ; 
and whatever the illuminati of Lancashire may ruminate, Re- 
form is not to be cut down by the sword, nor put down by 






13 

the hundred-handed Briareus of legal tyranny. Right shall yet 
triumph over might ; and the brazen-headed clay-footed Colos- 
sus of bigotry shall, ere long, be dashed into a thousand pieces, 
by the levelling mace of reason. e Knowledge is power/ 
exclaims philosophy ; and the Press, with her ten thousand 
tongues, reecchoes the golden axiom, and the nations hear it 
rejoicingly, and they bless the mother for the child's sake — • 
her eldest born — the fair haired — 

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty. 

So your Areopagites ' took on themselves an act of high 
1 responsibility' Certainly ; but as to the ' moral courage'— 
the ( great example,' you so gratuitously prate about, these 
seem to me as impalpable and idle as the ' great moral les- 
son' read to a neighbouring nation by the * great Captaiu of 
the age,' the swordsman of Waterloo : remember, however, 
that we conclusively and perfectly agree on the fact you adduce, 
that you ' were stigmatized by the country as murderers.' I 
cannot quit this paragraph, (pp. 17 and J 8), without tendering 
you the homage of my compliments on the very extraordinary 
vivacity of its contents. Like your brilliant review of the late 
war, in your commencement, it is a perfect literary curiosity ; 
like that, it has its flood of victory and glory, and, woe is me ! 
its most lame and impotent conclusion. Two-thirds of your 
matter here is devoted to the detail of your triumph over the 
Radicals, — and the remnant, breathing horror and despair, lets 
drop the fatal secret, that your heroic deeds on the l6th had 
only precipitated you into a more frightful situation than ever! 
' Assassination was now proclaimed the order of the day. The 
' pistol zvas levelled^ the dagger pointed at every magistrate, 
i yeoman, and notoriously loyal man' ' Struck with fear,' 
1 our characters blasted, our minds stung,' ' we were palsied 
1 and incapable of action!' Now, whether all this is poetic 
prose and truth, or prosaic poetry and fiction, you shall explain 
when we meet; but I cannot help remarking, it presents a 
striking contrast to your condition previous to the day of blood : 
and I regret, that you have not informed us, what had become 
of ■ the bold countenances,' wearing * reflective and determined 



14 

e purpose 1 — c of those, whose blood revulsed to the heart by 

* fearful expectation } was ready to be propelled to the extre- 

* mi ties, with supernatural energy, in fighting pro aris et 
'focis.' ' This was lofty ! — this is Ercles' vein !' But now, 
alas ! instead of \ moving storms/ you ' condole in some mea- 
{ sure ;' instead of making ' ail split/ you ' roar as gently as 
1 any sucking dove ;' — truly, Sir, a melancholy rehearsal of a 
most melancholy drama ! 

Your next paragraph (p. 18,) is a delectable specimen of 
the reductio ad absurdum. You complain — complaining 
ever ! — that the firm of * Wood, Waithman, and Co/ — What ! 
again quarrelling with poor Alderman Wood ? — ' prejudicated 
' our cause before it zoas heard ; and, as though they wished to 
( instigate the Radicals to shed our blood, they clamored for 
' inquiry and condign justice. 7 Gentle natures—amiable sim- 
plicities — clothed in ' columbine innocency !' Marvellously 
proper two-legged unfeathered animals abiding in the Eden 
of Lancashire, and pure as was i the first man that ever bore 
arms' in his first and best estate ! Exemplars of that golden 
age — reflections of the time- 
When angels dwelt, and God himself, with man! — 

What ! was your cause then, so horribly anomalous, dark, 
and doubtful, that a mere call for ' inquiry/ a plain request 
— a regular solicitation for \ justice/ hazarded your valu- 
able lives ? For the sake of the good cause of corruption and 
tyranny, I conjure you, Rev. Sir, not to commit to paper — 
much less to print — such suicidal nonsense as this. Well may 
Keith Douglas, the self-elected supervisor and grand inquisitor 
of the ministerial press, rail at you Tory scribblers, as a set of 
brainless, senseless noodles, who make a bad cause worse by 
your impotent and clumsy attempt; to support it. 

That I may set your unparalleled excellence on its proper 
vantage ground, I shall quote an exquisite passage in illustra- 
tion of your political skill. We are now at p. 19. ' When 
* the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act had routed and im- 
e . prisoned the Radicals, we have seen how Alderman Wood 



15 

1 raised their fallen standard,'— why, this Alderman is a very 
devil incarnate! — ( .and hoio soon the Opposition rallied so 
' strong around it, that government was obliged to 
' take off that suspension!' So much for ' vigorous 
measures!' — So much for a parson's defence of what he un- 
derstands so well ! What a refined and cleansing development 
of the springs of ministerial action ! In what a sunny light it 
sets their firmness — how superbly sparkles their absolute wis- 
dom ! ft is, however, in the great toe of this paragraph, that 
you out-do all your previous out-doings; for now, notwith- 
standing all your woeful predications and predictions, you drop 
into our festering wounds the balsam of consolation, in giving 
us the assurance, that f radicalism is dying !' Think of 
that, Master Brook ! ' King Hunt,' moreover, i is in prison,' — 
Pope Home enthroned in Sal ford — and the ' moral and po- 
i litical' millenium is at hand ! Here are crumbs of comfort, 
— here is the pap of promise for ye — despairing, fear-flouted, 
palsied yeomen — 'our brave yeomen' of Manchester! Nay, 

I' the name of something holy, Sirs, why stand you 

In this strange stare ? 

The trash you vomit against the Catholics at p. 20, although 
it may be very goodly in the mouth of Established Church, is 
revolting even to Gentile sense, and a disgrace to any one cal- 
ling himself a disciple of Jesus. 

O, it is monstrous! monstrous! 

Me thought, the billows spoke and told me of it, 

The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder • 

That deep and dreadful organ-pipe — pronounc'd 
The name of ' Persecution.' 

' Who art thou that judgest another ?' From what office 
have you, Rev. Sir, taken out your patent for constraining and 
vilifying millions of your fellow-subjects — at least as virtuous, 
as conscientious, and as Christianity-disposed as you are ? 
Whence your effrontery in thus taxing sincerity of opinion — ■ 
whence your power to crush that liberty wherewith Christ has 
made all his followers free ? Matchless impudence ! — truly wor- 
thy of c Protestant Ascendancy,' and a state-wedded Church ! 
But have a care : you surplice-wearers and mitre-worshippers 



16 



are in a woeful minority ; your infatuated obstinacy, and time- 
serving subserviency, are driving thousands daily from your al- 
tars; and the time — mark the qualification ! — may not be far 
distant, when the full description of your situation will be com- 
prised in the heart-freezing ejaculation of the Moor, — 

OTHELLO'S OCCUPATION'S GONE! 

At page 21, you are again on the bones of the unfortunate 
Alderman, whom you designate ' a true London sala- 
' mander!' ' Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterranean — a 
f sweet touch ! a quick venew of wit ! quick and home ! it re- 
c joiceth my intellect.' But let me, evangelically appealing, en- 
treat you not to press so hard on a most imbecile, unhappy, 
spirit-broken, degraded, (and as the chaste and classic Rosa 
Matilda, the Bona Dea, the Alma Mater of the Morning 
Post, stiles him,) log-headed and stupid individual : it savors 
of malice — aforethought malice — pray you avoid it. And, 
as an incentive to better feelings, allow me to refer you to a 
text, from which you may purify your own spirit, and edify 
your congregation, on the subsequent Sunday: — it is in the 
wisdom of solomon,— (did you ever hear of such a book? 
— if not, you may find it in the Apocrypha of your Bible), — 
at chap. xiv. v. 7. — I Blessed is the wood whereby righteous- 
1 ness cometlu 

I am now approximating the zenith of your ' high argu- 
1 ment ;' but the sun of knowledge is cheering another hemi- 
sphere, and the shadows of darkness alone surround me. It is 
now ' witching time,' — 

That hour, o' night's black arch the ke y-stane, — 
and the goddess of the silver bow has deserted her path in our 
heaven, and is earthward-gone to breath her love- worn spirit into 
the ear of the sleeping Endymion. Yet some kind star shall 
lend its ray to light me through ' the palpable obscure/ till 
Aurora shall unbar the gates of morning and of truth. Hope 
tramples on doubt, and bids me speed fearlessly onward. 

1 am, Rev. Sir, &c. 



17 



LETTER III. 

Reverend Sir, 

In my last movement, the diapason closed full in Alderman 
Wood, and you now compel me to a descant, by way of pre- 
lude, on the same stop. Happy Matthew \—fortunatus, sua 
si bona norit! — Felicitous official! whose variety of excel- 
lence rivets the warm attention, the unbought service of our 
curate, in all places, and at all times ! Orpheus doated not more 
on his Eurydice, than Melville doats on Matthew ; — 
Te veniente die, te decedente canebut. 
Judging, Rev. Sir, from the epicurean — the glutton-gusto 
with which you riot on the name and fame of this individual, 
it must appear to any impartial mind, that your trespasses 
against him are as necessary to your existence and comfort, as 
your daily bread. A strange judgment, you may say, on a 
shepherd of Christ's flock ! — Yet strange as it seems, this judg- 
ment is justified by the printed evidence before me. You 
have shot at him every epithet that the quiver of malignity 
could supply ; and have dared to insinuate motives — which a 
false bead alone could forge out of a falser heart — to a man 
whose single crime is the fulfilment of what your catechism 
calls, his * duty towards his neighbour/ He is the good Sa- 
maritan, who has bound up the wounds of the maltreated and 
the desolate, who has stretched forth the hand of a brother to 
the disowned and persecuted wayfarer, and in evil days has 
stood the heaven-approved friend of one who had no friend, of 
one who was cast abroad, a waif and a stray in society, a dis 
carded and houseless wanderer. Reverse the picture, and be- 
hold the proud and haughty Levite ! Oh, yes ! we can read 
it well : we have nop so much of bigot-stupidity, but we can 
readily distinguish between a professing Christian and a prac- 
tical demon, — between a professing loyalist and a practical 
Jacobin. Like your delicate friend and coadjutrix, Demont, 
yeu have awhile flourished in all the glory of deceit and ' double 

D 



IS 

entendre ;' but mark, holy Sir, — the license of priestcraft has 
expired ; your day is dim, and you no more shall 

Palter with us in a double sense ; 
the day-spring has broken on your deeds of darkness ; your * con- 
jurations/ and your l mighty magic/ that heretofore withered 
the nerves of the civilized world, and made the stoutest trem- 
ble, are become a standing jest in our streets and fields ; — and 
henceforth, all saws and forms of superstition, whether printed 
or preached, shall pass like still-born infants into the limbo 
of nothingness and oblivion ; and her sheep-skin documents 
shall be regarded but as so many diplomas of the college of 
imposture, — always excepting the expression of her unmixed 
hatred, her atrocious backbiting, and her perjury-propped op- 
pression of the King's consort, the rightful Queen of these 
realms. And here it may be asked, — if an extended practice 
of duty in the pulpit and at the altar of Established Church, if 
a long life, devoted exclusively to the study of the principles 
of Christianity, produce such bitter fruit as this, — who but an 
idiot would affect to mourn over increasing dissent and spread- 
ing Deism ? How far the pure philosophy, the exalted reli- 
gion of Jesus, are promoted by the doctrines of the Athanasian 
Creed and the Thirty-nine Articles, or exemplified in the ge- 
neral practice of orthodox ' bishops and curates, and all com- 
mitted to their charge/ falls not now within my province to 
inquire ; but happily for the Christian, abominations like these 
under discussion, spring not from the roots of Divine Re- 
velation ; they are the produce of the Upas of falsehood grafted 
on the stock of truth, the branches whereof are already decay- 
ing, and shall, ere long be cut down and cast into the fire. 

On breaking into your comments on her Majesty, — whom 
God preserve ! — I am shocked at the horrible licentiousness of 
your ghostly pen. Not Franklin Forbes Fletcher, whose 
mental excrement has so plentifully perfumed the Morning 
Post for the last three months, has exceeded your vitupera- 
tion. Noscitur a sociis. Little need is there of a question as 
to your course of study, or the school which classes you among 
her chosen sons; of these we have mathematical demonstra- 



19 

tion : but even then, let me ask, — since there is a heart of flesh 
and blood lodged within the ribs of man, — who but a fiend 
could write as you have written on this soul-harrowing sub- 
ject?— 

Quis talia fando 
Tempcret a lacrymis ? 

Reverend Sir, here is a woman — a Princess born — of a 
family not more ancient and illustrious, than gallant and brave, 
— the beloved niece of George the Third, — the adored mo- 
ther of a Princess, whose mysterious death shook this Empire 
like an earthquake ; a woman, drawn, in the very blossom of 
life in the early summer of beauty from her parental roof 
by promises and hopes, * no sooner blown than blasted/ — the 
betrothed of the first prince — the most accomplished gentle- 
man — in Europe, and that exalted one, her near relative in 
blood ; a woman, formed by nature to delight the eye of taste, 
and to fix the attachment of sensibility and intellect, at once 
the life, the grace, and ornament of society, yet whose very 
bridal hour was clouded by neglect, and chilled by insult; a 
woman, who driven from under the roof of her sworn protec- 
tor with an infant daughter in her arms, has been for the ex- 
tended diuturnity of five-and-twenty years subjected to suffer- 
ings which the heart sickens to think of, exposed not to slight 
alone or contumely, — yet to these in such deep degree as would 
have broken a less noble spirit, — but robbed of the society of 
her child, sent forth to be taunted by prostituted insolents and 
courtly panders — surrounded by household spies, baited by 
calumny and dogged by slander ; — a woman, whose ' kinsfolk 
have failed,' whose { familiar friends have forgotten' her, and 
they whom she loved, turned against her ; — a woman, waylaid 
in the very desert by winked-at treason, and stabbed by unna- 
tural villainy even while sitting on the comfortless lap of de- 
solation ; — a woman, in short, twice marked out the hunted 
victim of atrocious and foresworn conspiracy, and now, in this 
very time, exposed to a third — more threatening and more cruel 
trial; — and you, Reverend Sir, a successor of the Apostles, in 
such a case and at such an hour — you, an expounder of the 



20 

Scriptures forsooth,— you, a disciple of 'the Man, Christ 
Jesus/ who taught, saying, ' Blessed are the merciful, for they 
shall obtain mercy/— you, who understand so clearly, and 
practise so purely that Christian love and charity, of which 
Paul has left so beautiful a portraiture, — you, who have at 
the hands of some Father in God, received the Holy Ghost, — 
you, the Reverend Melville Home — curate of St. Stephen's in 
Salford, eloquar an sileam ? — even you have the heart — the 
brave, the manly, the generous heart, to insult over her mis- 
fortunes and miseries, to strike her bruised feeling, to malign 
her motives, and to swell to the utmost of your croaking and 
stentraphonic organ, the wolfish chorus that peals forth her 
destruction! Fie on't, O fie ! May the benevolence of Heaven 
grant you the grace of a speedy repentance ! 

i now proceed, and shall quote a passage at p. 22 ; wherein, 
mirabile dictu ! we entirely agree. ' How many noble lords 
c and illustrious commoners, condescend to take a part in the 
< disgraceful drama of Bergami, posterity will not believe, 
4 and sons shall blush for their fathers. Even in the bloody 
'factions of York and Lancaster, there was something manly; 

* in this ignoble, hateful strife, there is no manhood. All is 
1 infamy, without one bright spot of truth, or spark of glim- 

* mering honor? Gentle reader, whether of ' the higher or 
( middle classes,' do not laugh, I entreat thee ; but assuredly all 
this was written, printed, and published, before a late famous 
right reverend and lordly inquisition had commenced its judi- 
cial inquiries, — and this indiscriminate abuse of the accusers 
and their supporters, for they alone had moved, is called 
defending the King ! ' Call ye that backing of your friends ? 
a plague upon such backing V It may, however, furnish 
Keith Douglas with another chapter of lamentations, and is 
therefore specially commended to his hand : and here let me 
remind this ingenious gentleman, of the propriety of dedi- 
cating to i the lowest orders,' his forthcoming volume of 
speeches, — for of such are the venal lying tools of the ministe- 
rial press, — especially as said orations were delivered expressly 
for their instruction ; — ' the higher and middle classes,' being 



21 

tire exclusive property of ? Crisis' Home, and ' Lay-Sermon' 
Coleridge. 

In the next sentence of this paragraph, you put ' the mighty 
< Parliament of England/ into petticoats ! — and, elevated with 
this sprightly sally of wit, ambition spurs you most gloriously 
upon the following facetious conundrum. * Faction now turns 
' her fury on an illustrious individual. A Royal Stag is 
' to be hunted dozvn, and even now he is surrounded by furious 
1 hounds and horsemen.' Quoth Dame Quickly to Falstaff, 6 I'll 
do what I can to get you a pair of horns;' but our Salford 
hornmaker has supplied a customer in less time than the good 
wench took to talk about it. ' For me,' says the witty knight, 
' I am here A Windsor stag; and the fattest, 
' i" think, in the Forest.' Now, Reverend Sir, I have track- 
ed you to cover, Shakspeare, however, is consistent and 
intelligible, we seize the jest and enjoy it ; but what you can 
mean by talking about i A Royal Stag,' passeth all my un- 
derstanding : — unless, indeed, I am to take it as a specimen of 
something which you evidently pride yourself in, and in another 
place call l Irony ;' and you there complain, that you cannot 
procure lodgings for your favorite in certain chambers — you 
cannot drive said i Irony into — the heads of ' the Woods, 
' Waithmans, and Favells;' it f has no influence* on them. 
Poor little i Irony V But, hark ye, good Sir, — when the 
Thames shall flow through Lancashire, or humanity lodge in 
the breasts of the Manchester Magistrates, there may be some 
hope of some reasonable creature or other catching some 
glimpse of your meaning. Be advised, however, and be quiet ; 
or, as you instinctively fear, we shall have your illustrious hero 
crying out, ' Am I not pierced in the house of my friends?' 

I have now arrived at p. 24, which opens with an in- 
comparable sample of diabolism ; I command patience to 
transcribe. ' It is for none to pronounce the Queen inno- 
e cent or guilty: a full and fair investigation of the law must 
'determine that. But, if her innocence were as 
* fully proved as it could be, — that is to say, that 

1 BY A DEFECT OF PROOF THE FACT COULD NOT BE 



<Z C 2 

c brought home, is it ever to be expected, that after such 
1 conduct abroad and at home, the King will ever put a 
' crown upon her head, or by any public act recognize her a$ 
6 England's QueenT Now, Reverend Sir, it is for you to 
explain, what passion was lord of the ascendant, when this 
most legitimate conclusion sprang thus entire from your cloven 
cranium ; and under what influence, you — a minister of the 
church of England, according to which, all, from the King 
down to the beggar, are f miserable sinners' — sat down to pen 
this flagitious passage ? Did you scribble it in your sleep ? — or 
were you drunk at the time, or mad ? — Charity would suatch 
at any plea to protect you from the charge of having ad- 
visedly and deliberately written a sentiment so infamous: — 

Howlings attend it : How hast thou the heart, 
Being a divine—a ghostly confessor — 
A sin-absolver, — 

and a sin-retainer too — thus to abuse religion ? — to break the 
bruised reed? — to quench the glow of mercy? — to dash the 
scales from the hand of justice — to seize her sword, and to 
plunge it into the bosom of an acquitted one ? So then, it is 
come to this, under ' the full reign of English law and li- 
' berty unimpaired] that even, if f a full and fair investigation 
pronounces her Majesty innocent, (and heaven alone knows 
where we can look for such investigation !) yet, in the merci- 
ful depths of mental reservation, you, Melville Home, being 
pleased to regard her as guilty, dare to insinuate that damned 
inuendo into the mind of the country. God of our fathers ! — 
what and where are we? ' Defect of proof,' indeed! 
If you know her Majesty to be guilty, come forth, 
face of brass! supply the defect, — atchieve, what the scum of 
accusation and advocacy here, flavoured with the dregs of 
Italian testimony, and strengthened with ' earth's most operant 
poison' — 

Gold, yellow — glittering — precious gold, 

failed to accomplish, — come forth, prove her guilty, and 
then glut your maw with the garbage of ribald abuse j it will 



23 

be rare sport for a manly tongue, exquisite food for a bible- 
toned palate: — but, if you know it not; beware I be- 
seech you : ' Villainous Slanderer,' 'Cowardly Ca- 
' lumniator,' are hard words, — but there are beings wander- 
ing about the earth wearing phylacteries inscribed with such 
characters, and I would not that you should be at any pains to 
procure enrolment in that company of recruits for the legions 
of the damned ; — 

No, heav'n forefend !— I would not kill thy soul. 
As I have ever as much pleasure in meeting you on your own 
particular ground, as on any that my own fancy might name, I 
shall take up the Bible, and submit (o you matter that may 
suffice for a week's reflection. In the 28th of Ecclesiasticus, 
it is written, ' Curse the whisperer and double tongued, for 
' such have destroyed many that were at peace. A back- 
' biting tongue hath disquieted many, and driven them from 
' nation to nation ; strong cities bath it pulled down, and over- 
1 thrown the houses of great men. A backbiting tongue hath 
1 cast out virtuous women, and deprived them of their labours. 
1 Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so 
' many as have fallen by the tongue. The death thereof, is an 
1 evil death, the grave were better than it.' Ponder on these 
words ; for they are the words of eternal truth : they will be- 
come your c velvet cushion :' you will find them wear well in 
your pulpit. Here we part, — 

You as your business and desire shall point you, 

, and for my own poor part, 

Look you — I will go, pray. 

I am, Rev. Sir, Yours, &c. 



LETTER IV. 

Reverend Sir, 
I have not overlooked your parenthetic allusion to c a former 
' delicate enquiry' Little, however, need here be said of 



24 

that famous inquisition, of the black malignity which engen- 
dered it, of the political juggling which swaddled its impo- 
tent nakedness. Thanks to Perceval, it is now recorded mat- 
ter, — it is written in a Book, (in a notable volume, which not- 
withstanding an attempt to destroy it by fire at its very birth y 
has survived for the public edification ;) whence we learn, that 
the illustrious accused, was not allowed to confront her ac- 
cusers, that she was denied the cross-examination of the 
wretched creatures who deposed against her ; we hear of the 
Douglas's and Bidgoods, of Lisle and that l Chevalier sans 
peur et sans reproche, 9 Moira, and his cleanly exploits in the 
buckbasket ; and would it not then be the height of indelicacy, 
were we to question the delicacy, setting aside the justice of 
this ever-memorable one-sided investigation ? Against a field 
of such infallible artillery, innocence alone were but a sorry 

shelter : — 

'Twill not bear out the blows of fate, 
Nor fence against the tricks of state, 
Nor from the oppression of the laws 
Protect the plain'st and justest cause, 
Nor keep unspotted a good name 
Against the obloquies of fame. 

Questionless, the unhallowed gruel was sufficiently l thick and 
slab' for a charm of powerful trouble ; yet the witchcraft 
failed. A beam from the sun of truth pierced the unholy 
sanctuary, and struck the cauldron, — the infernal spell was in a 
moment blasted and broken, adultery evaporated in the thin 
impalpable smoke of levity, and nought was left to the foul 
enchanter but the sediment of perjury ; — the rankest of moral 
poisons, however, was to him a precious residuum, infinitely 
eclipsing the grosser arcana of Locusta ; it was given, divers 
considerations us thereunto moving, to the cabal for use 
when wanted : these sage doctors of the State are now trying it 
on a hopeless case of King's Evil ; and thus at present rests 
' this strange eventful story/ 

Your spleen next rises on the circumstance of her Majesty's 
residing abroad, * zdthout English ladies and gentlemen of 



• . 



25 

' unblemished honor round her person.' l Truth lies in atn- 
\ bush/ and I may therefore be excused in enquiring, whether 
her royal and most affectionate husband ever looked to this ; 
and you, Reverend Sir, will perhaps inform me, whether his 
matrimonial vows imposed such a duty on him or not. Surely, 
when Canning, for reasons that are now ' obvious and oblru- 
' sive/ cajoled his royal mistress out of the country, half a 
score saints male and female might easily have been selected 
from our moral Court to attend her person. Was there not 
the f unblemished honor 7 of the old Jersey, and Headfort, and 
Fitzherbert, and Paget, and Hertford, and Conyngham, and 
fifty others — l all honorable ?' — and could not one hound be 
spared out of so choice a pack, to i spaniel at the heels' of our 
abandoned and proscribed loving cousin and consort? She 
might call, it is true, — but would \ they come when they were 
f called V However cudgel not your reverend brains about it : 
when again taxed on this tender subject, say, ' I will answer no 
f impertinent questions ;' — ' I will not be stared at ; this is the 
currency of the day ; if you can throw a little of the wise into 
your looks withal, it will easily pass, and Ethelston shall vo- 
lunteer an oath that you are the very model of absolute wisdom. 
A true born Englishman,— you see I play up in one point 
at least to your own conception of that character, — I am *• a 
'free-speaker/ and as such I make no apology for traversing 
your most ungracious distaste ' of foreigners, and most of all 
' of Italians,' a sentiment diametrically opposed to the opinion 
of that God of your idolatry — the minister. He, kind soul ! 
loves these Italians dearly, and in their particular, realizes the 
old hospitality, standing — like the good angel of his country — • 

With open arms, taking the needy in, 

To feed and clothe — to comfort and relieve them. 

And they in turn approve themselves worthy. They consume 

the victual 'tis true, and pocket the money ; but they render 

invaluable service, — 

Distort the truth, accumulate the lie, 
And piie the pyramid of calumny : 

yea, they swear away the eternal and immutable laws of na- 

E 



36 

ture. Majochi, in the rattling din of a vessel under sail, can 
hear the creaking of a sofa through two solid decks ; Cuchi, 
out of some twenty-four hours, such as mortals count, creates 
six goodly days and goodly nights ; Demont confers a double 
real presence on her betrayed mistress, making her extant at 
one and the same moment, in her sleeping-chamber and in a 
box at the opera ; while the caro sposo of this Alpine nymph,— 
Sacchi, with the aliases, — stretches an arm the full length of a 
two hours journey, and thrusts his invisible hand through the 
glass pane of a carriage window, without breaking it. — Why, 
Belzebub himself out of his ' deep sense' could not elaborate a 
more perfect gratitude ! 

I now pass to your next paragraph, which opens amid the 
lightning of your high displeasure. You say, ' With a suite 
6 of Ber garni s, her Majesty made a tour to Elba, Malta, 

* Algiers, Jerusalem, Venice, Naples, Milan, Austria, and 
' all the Continent, in a style, calculated to reflect nothing 
' but disgrace on herself, her Royal Consort, and the British 

* nation? What superb rigmarole have we here ! But first 
of all, get ye, Reverend Sir, to the nearest charity-school, and 
ask the first child you meet, to correct your grammar, for you 
really have mauled Priscian's head most ummercifully. ' A 
x Tour to all the Continent,* is as wise a phrase as * a voyage 

* in all England ;' and had I not an ill divining spirit, I should 
certainly opine that your skill in geography wears a question- 
able shape, so strangely have you jumbled your materials 
together in this sentence. The slandered Countess Oldi 
would have cut a sorry figure at the Lords' bar, were her 
knowledge of these sciences so miserably confined as yours. 
With your gracious permission, we will transform ' a Tour to 
c Austria' into ' a Journey to Vienna/ — a movement rendered 
ever-memorable by the unparalleled gallantry — the eximious 
loyalty — of that pink of popinjays, the Lord Ambassador 
Stewart, the patron and friend of the faithful Theodore. 
Then for ' a Tour to Algiers, 7 we will substitute f a Voyage 
1 to Tunis,' undertaken for— what Gifford or Copley would — 
or perhaps did — call — the sensual, abominable, and adulterous 



27 

purpose — of visiting the sand-embedded walls and prostrate 
columns of heroic Carthage, and of contemplating the shat- 
tered and shapeless remains of that Utica — even in ruins dear 
to liberty — where — 

Cato gave his little senate laws. 
Thence her Majesty sailed to Palestine, and journeyed (hor~ 
resco referens) up to Jerusalem, to Zion's hill 



and Siloa's brook, 



That flow'd fast by the oracle of God ; 
to that sacred city, on which your mental eye must often 
linger with fervid and ineffable emotion ; to that awful 
spot, which, as the Holy of Holies, must be ever present to 
your imagination in more than human magnificence ; to that 
home of prophecy, which religion made her consecrated 
dwelling place, and the Most High his chosen abode. And 
even here has domestic treason sown her bestial perjuries] 
Ephesus too unconsciously supplied her share of poisoned 
entrails and sweltered venom. And Athens ; — but I must leave 
this sketch to be coloured by Copley, whose talents in dis- 
temper at least are of first rate excellence : and I beg to ob- 
serve en passant, that 'in mine opinion' there is a striking re- 
semblance, Reverend Sir, between yourself and that happy 
pair, the Damon and Pythias of lawyers, Messieurs Attorney 
and Solicitor General, for you are evidently all three of an 
industrious class of operators, who — 

by preposterous overdoing 
And underjudging — all their projects ruin. 

Next you gabble about ' wild travels/ and term them ' a 
e delirious dream ;' but what a wild creature must you be — 
how delirious must be your waking hours — and in what a 
desert wilderness of mind must you move, who trumpet 
forth ex cathedra such hare-brained vulgarisms as these? 
Common sense revolts — refined sense smiles at your agrestic 
simplicity. I have now to propound a proposition on this sub- 
ject, which I shall be happy to moot with you at your leisure ; 
it opens, observe, with a little parenthesis of your own, 



26 

which alone comprizes a history ; and what a history ! I 
contend then, that ( if, (circumstanced as she was,) 
' any species of action or employment, could unequivocally 

* testify the exalted order of her Majesty's intellect, her ardent 
' thirst after most enviable knowledge, the purity and correct- 
' ness of her taste, and the rare ability of her magnanimous 

* spirit to work out of her very destitution — resources of enjoy- 

* merit worthy of a Queen, aye, and of a Queen of England 
1 too ; that testimony is to be found, in her nobly daring the 

* perils of travel by land and by water, to behold with her own 
1 eyes — to tread with her own feet — ' the vast realms of won- 

* der/ and the brightest field of heroic exploit; to visit coun- 
tries, and cities, and rivers, and rocks, and hills, and vallies, 
' and temples, and monuments and ruins, hallowed by the 
' songs of genius, immortalized in the records of history, — 
1 landmarks of mind, and buoys in the channels of time, to 
' guide us in the wake of imperishable fame, and give us the 
' bearings of all that is great and sublime in human atchieve- 

* ment/ Rome — the eternal, ' the Niobe of nations/ with 
her renown, her capitol, and her forum, excites no sympathy 
in your breast. Fair Venice, she — ' the Sea-Cybele' — the 
Planter of the Lion, with her countless centuries of indepen- 
dence and triumphant bravery, stirs not the Lethean stream of 
your feeling. And thou, matchless Athena ! crowned with un- 
dying, with undecaying glory ! * Land of lost gods, and god- 
like men !' — the insensate are reckless of thy name — the Sal- 
ford curate knows thee not: — 

Yet to the remnants of thy splendor past 

Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng ; 
Long shall the voyager, with the Ionian blast, 

Hail the bright clime of battle and of song : 
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue, 

Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; 
Boast of the aged ! lesson of the young ! — 

Which sages venerate, and bards adore. 

But I must break through the enchantment that is gathering 
around me, content to breathe a less pure air, and to pace a 
lower sphere in tbe company of my ghostly friend. 



29 

As to Berganii, — a suite of M'Mahons or Bloomfields 
may sound better to your ear, because perhaps the latter spring 
from noble families, — both having at least come in with the 
Conqueror, and quartering with every one of the old peerage ; — 
but this melody may not suit every taste. And as to your sen- 
sitive complaint of the f style in which her Majesty travelled, 
you seem to me as little capable of judging as of the object of 
travel : ' style 9 moreover is a most lax word, Rev. Sir ; it is 
but a comparative term at best, it is dependent on taste, on 
means, and on fifty other contingent considerations. ' jDiis- 
' grace,' however, is more palpable, it can be handled and 
felt ; and first then — as to f disgrace on herself;* — how could 
that be accomplished by a party, who, according to your dictum 
had already sinned past all redemption ? Secondly, how was it 
possible that she could ' disgrace her Royal Consort T — unless 
indeed you would imply, that her existence in certain circum- 
stances abroad, the effects of villainy on this side the water, 
' reflected disgrace on' — O yes! I can understand that very 
well : there you are right, Parson. And now as to the third 
and last party in this ' disgrace' — ' the country ;* I think we 
may very well leave to Castlereagh's 'generous delusion of 
' the people/ and Courtenay's ' turning popular tide,' the ba- 
lancing of all differences between us on that score. ' Dh- 
' grace' truly ! No wonder this locomotion made her ene- 
mies wince. It was hoped that the good soul would sink 
under its misery ! It was expected that this heroic Princess 
would creep into some obscure corner of the earth, and sit 
down, and pine in thought, and sicken, and die — and all to 
please Prince Prettyman ! Vastly romantic ! — but alas ! such or- 
thodox speculation never disturbed her rest ; and here she is— 
alive and in health, strong in conscious integrity and conscious 
innocence, the conqueror of persecution and of despair, the pride 
of the people, and the rightful Queen of the British empire. 

We are now at page 25, and you there tell us, ' She married a 
' Prince of Wales, and was associated to all his honors. When 
* he became king of England, and had reason to be offended,' 
fyc. What a full, true, and particular account is here of the 



so 

twenty-five years disconnected connexion of this illustrious 
pair ; far outstripping the boasted laconic brevity ! I need not 
follow you through this page, as I shall leave untouched your 
hearty attempts to file down the glory of the Queen Consort's 
regality, except by one remark, viz. that you durst as soon 
have thrown yourself down from St. Stephen's steeple, as 
have published such a radically-republican paragraph in the 
lifetime of her late Majesty of blessed memory. 

I now turn to the most grave question arising out of this de- 
testable persecution, and to the most perfect illustration of the 
genuine Christian spirit which has animated all its movements; 
to such a deed, as 

sweet religion makes 

A rhapsody of words. 

I allude to an act that has marked as with a brand every honest 
and religious heart in this island, — the blotting her Majesty's 
name out of the public prayers of her people. But let us hear 
your note of defiance, your vindication of this unsanctified pro^ 
ceeding. < If, as the dignified head of the State and Church 
1 of England, he has excluded her name from the service of 
f our Church, he has exercised his indubitable prerogative.'* — » 
Proud word prerogative ! — and so thought an Englishman, 
neither priest nor pagan, yet a patriot and philosopher ; ( pre- 
rogative/ says John Locke, f is nothing but the 
'power of doi^g public good without a rule;' 
and if this definition is correct, perhaps you, Sir, will tell us, 
how by any possibility this liturgical erasure can promote the 
common weal. Lawyers too, of no mean repute, have ques- 
tioned its legality. Mother Church, however, can confound 

* This indubitation is, of course, nothing less than parsouly truth— but 
law steps forth to ' tickle' the reverend * catastrophe.' In stat. 13, 14. Car. 
II. c. iv. it is thus written, — 

* XXV. Provided always, and be it farther enacted by the authority afore- 
* said, that in all those Prayers, Litanies, and Collects, which do in any way re- 
1 late to the King, Queen,, or Royal Progeny, the names be altered and 
' changed from time to time, and fitted to the present occasion, and according 
« to the directions of lawful authority.* 



31 

both law and philosophy, and your fiat has filled me with de- 
lectation. Yes, you are right, indubitably right, Parson ; and 
by that single act, I warrant you, ' dignified head 1 has done 
that for ' our Church? which not any nor all his predecessors 
have done since Charles the headless. One is thought-sick at 
contemplating such exercise of such prerogative. We think of 
that benevolent Being, ' who is good to all, and whose tender 
\ mercies are over all his works/ and we ask if this deed har- 
monizes with the divine attributes. We think of the frailty of 
our common nature, of our imperfections, our negligences, 
and ignorances, — and we ask whether it becomes a wretched 
sinner to inflict a visitation like this on any fellow-creature. 
We think of the nature of prayer and of the constitution of the 
human mind, and we fearlessly assert, that were the very name 
of Queen expunged — not from the Liturgy alone, but from 
the language, — the devout spirit of this nation, as the tongue 
o'erleaped the dismal chasm, would send forth to the throne of 
Him who careth for the desolate and oppressed, a heart-flow- 
ing aspiration for the welfare, temporal and eternal, of one 
rendered doubly dear by her forced subjection to this worldly 
this pitiful treatment. Hear how Jehovah spake to the guilty 
ones of old : hear, Reverend Sir, and tremble for your patrons, 
your brethren, and yourself. * When ye spread forth your 
( hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make 
' many prayers, I will not hear; — your hands are full of 

< blood: 

I shall not at this time add one sentence that may disturb 
the feelings, which the consideration of these words cannot 
fail to generate in your pious breast ; but in due season I shall 
be with you again. 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER V. 

Reverend Sir, 

•But the wind has chopped round, and the halcyon floats on 



32 

the tranquil surface of your lately ruffled feeliug : for once, 
you are all charm and charity, brilliancy and beauty ; the lily 
of liberality — the musk of mercy — the carbuncle of courtesy ! 
—but yourself shall pipe your own praises. ' To live as she 
' pleased abroad, with the courteous title of 2ueen of Eng~ 
' land, and an income of 50,0001. per annum, unmolested, 
' with conscious honor if innocent, and with impunity if 
' guilty, might have shed a glory upon her head, and enabled 
* her to close her days in peace? What a splendid constella- 
tion of grammar and politico-morality is this ! — I suspect, 
Reverend Sir, that you had seriously decided on writing your- 
self 'a fool positive/ — that under such determination, you had 
taken for gospel-truth the quaint couplet of a great wit, — 

For learned nonsense has a deeper sound 

Than easy sense, and goes for more profound, — 

and that you had straightway sat down to pen your * Crisis.' 
But to the proof. Supposing that her Majesty had com- 
promised her purity, — (and I blush to assume it even as a 
mere ground of argument,) — yet you, a ' constituted guardian 
' of morals in the country/ as Cunningham so pertinently calls 
you, would prompt this traitress to the marriage-bed to 
parade her infamy, her paramour, and ' the courteous title of 
' Queen of England,' round the Continent of Europe,— at 
once affording ' a practical comment' on our taste and delica- 
cy, and exhibiting a living monument of our shame. Surely 
this 'delirious dream' were admirably 'calculated to reflect 
' nothing but disgrace on herself, her royal consort, and the 
( British nation !' But this is not all : concessions of regal 
title and impunity in guilt satisfy not your ' deep sense' of 
right and wrong. You must bribe — what! — to repentance 
and reformation? No, but to the prolongation of vicious in- 
dulgence. You must present her more goldenly to her trium- 
phant inamorato ; — 

See — here be all the pleasures 
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, 
When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns 
Brisk as the April buds iu primrose season. 



33 

Well done, master Parson ! Compared with you, Uncle Pan- 
darus was a sorry professor, and Comus but a foolish tempter. 
Your ends and your means are congruent and happy: you 
would atchieve a great and a good work, and you proceed 
with great and good appliances : you are no ignorant pretender 
to wisdom — O no ! you have a beseeming share of arch- 
priestery, — and thus gifted, nothing had remained for us but 
obedience to your holy dictates had we lived in a Pagan land : — 
as it is, however, we presume to doubt the value of your grand 
acquirements ; we think it scarcely correct, — that an individual, 
paid by the public for common place services ; — which, as 
Bentham has truly observed, might be done at least as well, 
and that without pay, by any boy of the first form of a cha- 
rity-school, — should dare to advocate this < treasonous offer;' 
and we hold it somewhat unholy in you, Rev. Sir, to talk of 
straining from the sweat of this impoverished, insolvent people, 
the enormous sum of 50,000/. by the year, and casting it into 
so foul a lap, to be squandered abroad in the multiplication of 
licentious abominations, in gilding the horns — peccavi ! — (he 
iniquity of adultery, in pampering its cloyed appetite, and in 
ministering fuel to its wasting embers. In my weak appre- 
hension, this were gratuitous profligacy, but such a casuist as 
my reverend friend, can doubtless prove to the satisfaction of 
' the higher and middle classes/ that it is the genuine essential 
oil of the Christian olive-yard. ' Unmolested'' too, ■ with a glory 
( upon her head, and enabled to close her days in peace. 1 
What an interesting picture ! But God-a-mercy, Parson! — 
where have you left your senses ? Title and gold shed ' a 
1 glory' on guilt ? Then, what a pure zany was Dr. Young — 
for thus wrote he— 

When men of infamy to grandeur soar, 

They light a torch to shew their shame the more ! — 

and how singular too is the quality of this ' glory — of exactly 
the same value whether its possessor is criminal or pure ! 
With you, the glory of guilt, and the glory of innocence, are 
not two glories, but one glory — one and indivisible : a strange 
confusion of substance! ' I do not like this fooling;' and 

F 



would therefore ask you, Rev. Sir, if you know any thing of 
the nature, the habits, the constitution, and passions of the 
human mind ? And if ' more yes than no/ — are you so be- 
sotted, as to think it possible, that omnipotent and unbridled 
malice should persecute his victim night and day for twenty- 
five years together, and on a given impulse — at some given 
moment, — say at 5 minutes past 2 o'clock, [P. M. on Satur- 
day, the 3rd of June, 1820, — drop his pursuit, and play the 
blood-hound no longer ? When the leopard shall shake off 
his spots, and the lion his fierceness, — when the tigress shall 
suckle the fawn, and the vulture feed the young turtle-dove, — 
then, and not till then, shall eye of man behold this moral 
consummation. It is an hypothesis, that a miracle alone 
could establish ; and the age of miracles is over-blown. Too 
long, alas ! have we heard the deafening roar of this mighty 
torrent of uncharitableness, too long have we looked on 
these swelling waters of hatred, — on this broad flood of dehu- 
manizing pollution, bearing down every stay of feeling, carry- 
ing on its shouldering billows every lett of religious obligation 
— every hindrance of social duty ; and which, — 

Like to the Pontic sea 
Whose icy current and compulsive course 
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, — 

knows no return, but keeps due on to the gulf of death,— 
to that bottomless and shoreless deep — wherein it shall finally 
deposit its fetid alluvion, and discharge its waves of bitterness. 
In page 26 you are at your ' dirty work again'— imputing 
disgraceful motives. Yet ere you had reviled her Majesty for 
so nobly spurning the base bribe so basely tendered at St. 
Omer's, ere you had reproached her with scouting the ' un- 
i blemished honor* of Hutchinson — the reputed successor of 
Moira in India — the true inheritor in 1320 of the ' unble- 
*■ mished' buck-basket ' honor'' of 1806 — it would have shewn 
but a decent candor had you treated us with the motives of 
your palsy-stricken messenger's employers in sending him on a 
fool's errand, and added the motives of your * preux Chevalier' 
himself, in undertaking a job • calculated to reflect nothing but 



35 

* disgrace* even on a town-scavenger, or a Milan Commis- 
sioner. i There is no honesty in such dealing, unless a woman 
should be made an ass and a beast — to bear every knave's 
wrong/ Go to, go to, goodman imputer ! 

A significant sneer at ' the whole suite of BergamVs' dulci- 
fies our next paragraph. You enquire why her Majesty did 
not bring them to England, &c. and then, assuming that she 
would have done so but for their personal fears, you ask, with 
infantine simplicity, * Did they tremble for their lives? 
' They are too worthless for Englishmen to 

* take/ Right orthodox, and sufficiently damnable i* faith! 
Human life ' too worthless to take!' { How now thou parti- 
' cular fellow ?' Let me have book, chapter, and verse, for 
this most ?*eligious assertion, or it must stand a blasphemous 
falsehood. Take their lives? What! destroy — kill them? 
Marry how ? — by course of law ? — by criminal indictment ? — 
by legal trial ? — by a verdict of Guilty delivered by a jury of 
twelve good and true men ? No. How then ? i by murder?' 
1 Ah ! ha ! come — some music ; come — the recorders/ Here 
is the dagger beneath the surplice, the old-established ultima 
ratio cleri. ' A man may hear this shower sing in the 
wind/ Like ' honest Iago/ their piety can strike, and stab, 
and innocently ejaculate the while — 

Kill men i' the dark ! — 

Ho! Murder! Murder! 

Now, if the reader has one drop of English blood flowing in 
his veins, I would ask him, whether such detestable insinua- 
tions, such direct incentives to assassination, become the pen, 
the lips, the heart, of a MAN — for I cast aside the flum- 
mery of clerical distinction ? I would ask, in what degree of 
honor, either kinship or friendship, must be rated with the 
coiner and utterer of such atrocious sentiment ? — and 1 would 
ask, whether the individual who publishes such diabolism, and 
inscribes himself a clergyman of the Church of England, 
has not fairly earned the honors due to hypocrisy ? For the 
credit of the Cloth however, and of human nature, be it here 
recorded, that this worthy is not a priest after the order of 
Titus and Timothy, but a political parson, trading in tfce far- 



36 

famed Manchester Joint Stock Company, aud one of the offi- 
cials attendant on the service of the Manchester Moloch. 
Hence the power of extracting poison and death from the 
bread of health and of life, — the power of forging war and 
wickedness out of that religion which breathes only * peace on 
' earth, and good will to man/ 

You proceed ; — ' The Queen never came to our coasts until 
she knew that laze could not touch her !' But she has been 
1 touched. Sir Topas, and that roughly too, by divers sa- 
vages in civilized life, and I have not heard that ' law 1 has 
1 touched! them for their malefactions. What indignities, in- 
sults, and injuries have they not visited upon her ? The com- 
plaint of the noble poet is simple truth on her lips : — 

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy, 

Have I not seen what human things could do?— 

From the loud roar of foaming calumny 

To the small whisper of the as paltry few, 

And subtler venom of the reptile crew ? 

Lawlessness has let slip his dogs upon her, and title and power 
have furnished whippers-in and huntsmen without number, yet 
there is a bare possibility that the game may escape, — (you will 
observe that I am not speaking of the antlered animal alluded to 
in a former page, — ) and in that case all may yet be well. As 
to your fulsome adulation of her Majesty's Royal Consort, it is 
quite rancid ; the gorge rises at it. One civet-scented pas- 
sage, however, I copy for the reader's edification, premising 
(and without irreverence be it spoken) that on a first reading, 
I mistook * him in whose breast,' &c. for another — an un- 
earthly King. ' It was not in the nature of her Royal 
1 Consort to take her life, even if convicted of crime, and if 
1 the law could claim it. In the humanity of a generous na- 
' tion, she was certain to find a prevailing advocate with 
'him, in whose breast she needed none!!!' Ri- 
sum teneatis, amici ? With Sir Fretful, ' I say nothing ; but 
this I will say,' — that proud as you seem of this sleeve of 
4 loyalty,'— 

Wert thou the devil, and wor'st it on thy horn, 

It should be challeng'd. 



37 

Having dwelt so long on her Majesty's positive misdeeds, 
you now (p. 27.) romance a little further, and treat us with 
your opinion of what her conduct should have been, while 
' laboring under disgraceful imputations.' ' Blushing, retir- 
' ing modesty, unaffected sorrow, and the patient, resigned 
* humility of degraded Majesty, should adorn her person, 
1 give credibility to protestations of innocence, and dress the 
1 scene, z&hich was to interest every worthy mind.' Pretty 
scene-dressing truly ! ' Blushing,' ' retiring,' * patient,' * re- 
signed;' — haily-gaily, gamboraily ! What delightful Delia Crus- 
can is here ! It rivals the choicest expression of that * never- 
f enough-to-be-sufficiently-admired' school of sentiment, and is 
evidently stolen from a late production of the Minervan Press 
— ( sippets of sensibility, by Charlotte Dacre, better 
known as Rosa Matilda.' Not so, your ■ unaffected sorrow : 
this is an original touch, worthy of the master-hand of the 
Salford curate ; — for to you, Reverend Sir, as to that single 
creature, amid the entire host of her Majesty's enemies, who 
has even suspected the sincerity of her grief, exclusively be- 
longs the merit of this rare, this exquisite conception. O no ! 
special care has been taken by capable powers to spare her 
the necessity of exhibiting ' the mockery of woe/ She has 
been plunged into the waters of misery where no shallows 
allowed the mimicing of deep immersion — she has been steeped 
lip-deep in tribulation ; and you, the merciful, kind-hearted, 
and holy one, can stand on the shore and tauntingly challenge 
her sense of suffering. An excellent preparative this for Pan- 
demonium ! 

You next pronounce, that, ' Full of honor herself, she should 
1 rely implicitly on the honor and justice of the Peers, the 
1 Commons, and the Judges,' Having been already well-dosed 
with * unblemished honor} I did not anticipate a recurrence 
of this quality ; however, lest her Majesty should be dolt and 
idiot enough to trust to such delusion, — peers, commons, and 
judges, have given ample proof of the value of this passive 
doctrine : and if there remain any scepticism as to the first of 
these parties, the peers, — look at Lauderdale, (the worthy de- 



38 

scendant of that * weasel Scot'— the thumbscrew Duke of his 
name), but yesterday the sworn private friend of Charlotte and 
Leopold, to day the sworn enemy, public and private, of the 



I wiil weep for thee ; 
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like 
Auother fall of man. 

And is not this honest, consistent, conclusive, and just as it 
should be ? So much for the honor, and as for the justice, — 
Astraea having gone to heaven, we must wait her return ere we 
speak on that subject. 

You proceed, ' So perfectly should she submit to God and 
( her country, as to scorn all appearance of making herself the 
* tool of a faction. 1 Now although you are a Churchman pro- 
fessed, yet having early discovered the seeds of the Mani- 
chaean heresy in your doctrinal speculations, I am unaffectedly 
puzzled to decypher what you here intend by ' submit to God* 
From the context, I can only come to a conclusion which wears 
a most suspicious character, but having no further light to 
guide me, I cannot reject it ; it is this ; — if her Majesty had 
pocketed the St. Omer's bribe ; or having come hither with a 
peccavi on her lips, had fallen down and worshipped the green 
bag Belial, and pleaded guilty, and sued for merey, and been 
content to be trundled out of the country even faster than she 
came into it ; — you, and such as you, would have called this, 
' submission to God.' Shame on such shameless prostitution 
of the name of Deity ! — which whether it proceed from < dig- 
nified head* or undignified tail, is too valuable a comment on 
the indubitable utility — the paramount necessity — the abstract 
value of a State-knotted priesthood, to be lost even on < the 
lower orders.' ' Jove bless thee, master Parson !' — submit by 
way of example : and in time to come, let us have loyalty and 
bigotry walking abroad content with their own raiment ; for it 
is not to be endured, that religion is to be stripped to cover 
their ill-fenced nakedness ; — it is not to be borne, that the 
name of Jehovah should be dragged into the filthy service of 
ministerial iniquity, and set up — like the raw-head and bloody- 



39 

bones of the nursery — to paralize the senses of the people, when- 
ever they contravene the course of corruption and tyranny. 

In p. 28, you deprecate the maltreatment of ' the wit- 
nesses'? Granted. But may not those, who f loaded them 
( with obloquy, while their names, character, and testimony 
' were unknown,' — justify, by the very plea you have yourself 
put in, as a ground of defence for your own slander and ca^ 
lumny of her Majesty and her advisers, — viz. that ' their con- 
1 duct excited the most detestable opinions of their designs ? 
I write not either to extenuate or impugn the moral sense of 
the people of Dover ; but surely, so special a rioter as your- 
self, ought to be the last to thrust your face into court with an 
indictment against them. Is this your i blushing, retiring, 
' modesty/ Mr. Counsellor ? 

The ' drum ecclesiastic* is now thumped with redoubled 
fury, and the distant voice of rebellion rings fearfully in your 
auricular organs. ' Whither is this agitated nation actually 
1 g°i n g> and for what are we rushing to arms and ruin T — you 
breathlessly exclaim, and will not wait for an answer ; else I 
should reply, that the * nation is actually going 1 to re- 
form ; and if she gain not that port, will on to ruin. As 
for your ' rushing to arms* I presume it is on some secret 
expedition, and must therefore refer you to the war ministers 
of the Holy Alliance, both for the cause and destination. Ap- 
prehension certainly makes sad work with your distracted powers 
of perception : ' the Opposition may kindle a civil war : that 

* is easily done! — they may shed torrents of blood, and yet 

* they would find it difficult — we trust, impracticable — to 
' effect such a purpose? Is not this difficult ease or easy dif- 
ficulty somewhat like a contradiction in terms, Rev. Sir ? — but 
you are evidently far gone, for you immediately enquire, 
1 May not the Radicals devour them as well as us, and so 

'make them sing T Why, Parson, this is the 

very extacy of Bedlam ! ' Even from my boyish days' I re- 
member the immortal — 

Four and twenty blackbirds bak'd in a pie,— 



40 

but, although they defied the king's baker and his fiery furnace., 
I never heard that these oven-proof melodists sung after his 
Majesty had dispatched them. Really, you are the most 
facetious fellow 1 ever met withal. Bottom, the shuttle-pro- 
peller of Athens, with his grasping genius, his trippingly-trotting 
triplets, his alternate < roar/ and ' monstrous little voice/ his 
« amiable cheeks and fair large ears/ ' has been, and shall be, 
1 a healthful laugh 7 for all time ; but while in this vein, you 
quite eclipse our delectable old friend, Nick the weaver, 
however high he may stand in his own good opinion, or in the 
popular regard ; and I trust you will take immediate steps to 
insure to the present music-loving generation and to posterity, 
the full benefit of your new mode of induction into the arcane 
science of song. A nod is as good as — , ' but the pro- 
verb is somewhat musty/ 

I am, Rev. Sir, Yours, &c. 



LETTER VI. 

Reverend Sir, 

Having somewhat recovered the needful gravity of muscle, 
which your laudable fears of the Opposition and their post- 
obit chorus so unseasonably disturbed, I am once again fairly 
at your service. 

We have now arrived at your 29th page, and you very sage- 
ly inquire, * After a world of crime and misery, must we not 
c return to a King, Lords, and Commons; andean we expect 
* better than those we have already T — and to this you append 
a supplication in your highest strain of grandiloquence ; — * Your 
' King, your country, your Lords, your Commons, your laws, 
i your liberties, your religion, your honors, your fortunes, and 
1 your lives, implore you, Gentlemen, to stop before it is too 
'. late 7 But surely, after kicking, cuffing, and reviling the poor 
Opposition, in almost every page, you cannot imagine the 
' Gentlemen 7 will defer to such fustian as this. To the first 
of your questions, 1 answer, that it will be time enough to think 



41 

how and to what we shall ' return] when we have deter- 
mined on a departure from the present established order of 
government ; and to the second, — I most freely allow, that { a 
' better King,' we cannot have, since we touch the very courts 
above in that particular ; — 

How much are we bound to Heaven-*- 

In daily thanks, that gave us such a prince ; 
Not only good and wise, but most religious ! 
Even the Angels have fallen, and man — being made a little 
lower than they — is continually lapsing into vicious misdoing : 
our law therefore has most wisely provided, that ' the King 

* can do no wrong ;' and St. Howley has further declared, that 
the King can commit neither folly nor sin, — that is, if my in- 
ference is legitimate, he can neither covet his neighbour's wife, 
nor play the adulterer, nor in any wise break any command- 
ment in the decalogue ; so that we have the peculiar attribute 
of Divinity — impeccability itself — sitting on the throne of 
these thrice happy kingdoms.* In regard to the Lords I cer- 
tainly entertain divers dubitations, but you shall not be trou- 
bled with the detail, because I clearly discern an incipient jest 
under your serious seeming. Commend me to you, Master 
Parson, for a sly-boots. What, then, you must have a pas- 
sing sneer at the ' unblemished honor of their lordships ! At 
the Chancellor, for instance, that ( man of salt'— with his 

* ' For all Englishmen, in their pure naturals, know (without studying) that a 
1 tyrant or usurper is no king, and Lhai a king is some highly lauful person placed 
l . at the head of the commonwealth for the good of it. These notions they suck 
i in with their first English air and mother's milk ; and even the people that 
1 follow the plough, know thai a tyrant or usurper is some base outlandish thing 
' that cannot stand in an English proclamation: for, if instead of crying l God 
1 save the king,' the crier should say l God save the usurper,' or ' God save the 

* tyrant,' — there is never a one of them all that would say — Amen. And again, 
1 all Englishmen that have any tolerable knowledge of the constitution, are sensU 
1 hie, that the office of a king depends wholly upon the law,— both in its making 
1 and in its being ; and that a king, as he is empowered by law, must act by law : 
' and therefore they must needs know at first sight, that a king, whose authority 
' is antecedent to the law, independent of the law, and superior to the law, — is an 
i invented and studied king, — and is a' king of clouts.' — Rev. Samuel John* 
son. Notes upon the Phoeuix Edition of the Pastoral Letter (ofDr, Slier* 
lock), 1694. 

G 



42 

' garden-water-pol' eyes, and his So-help-me-Godism ; al 
the moral delicacy of York and Clarence ; at the spotless 
purity of Anglesea and Headfort ; at the mannerly mouth of 
Manners ; at the uprightness of that second Daniel — New- 
castle, and his honest compeers Home and Sheffield ; at the 
wiseacre wisdom of Ellenborough, Grantham, and Somers ; at 
the Queen-abhorring tongue of Montrose ; at the disinterested- 
ness of Dolitlle Donoughmore, and Dollman Grenville; at 
the cleanly wit of Buckingham ; and at the unbribed and ele- 
gant advocacy of Bceotic Lauderdale, with his ' Sivita Veeshia/ 
(Italice * Civita Vecchia/) and his other ninety and nine illus- 
trations of the Scots- Lombard or Lombard-Scots' dialect! 
And you must run a tilt at the spiritual bench, — at the In- 
comprehensions ! This, 

1 This was the most unkindest cut of all/ — 

for * ye are brethren.' My Lords the Bishops ! Fathers in 
God ! Grace be unto you : there is a statute called the Act 
of Uniformity, which provides for the uniformity of con- 
secration, &c. but how unfortunate that it does not insure 
uniformity of opinion on a vital question of morals ! Not- 
withstanding our Thirty-nine Articles, it appears that the 
points of the mariner's compass diverge not more freely from 
their common centre, than our Right Reverends from Chris- 
tian unity : for if you inquire the right road to heaven, you 
shall have three or four contradict the direction given by the 
same number of them, in answer to the same question, — some 
recommending the way of Canterbury, others of York, and a 
third party taking Chester as the proper direction ; so that no 
wonder the craft is daily sinking in the estimation of a most 
thinking and enlightened people : — but 

I have o'ershot myself, to tell you of it: 
I fear, I wrong the houorable men 
Whose daggers have stabb'd Caesar, — 

and his wife too, by Jupiter :— Let the blank verse halt for't. 
Now, for your Commons, — s I could an if I would' say some- 
thing ; — that although less fleshed in honors than the Upper 
House, they would divide with their Lordships the glories of 



A3 

corruption — if corruption existed ; — they would pocket bribes 

as thankfully, if bribery could endure the English atmosphere ; 

— they would as heartily applaud a tyrant, if such character 

were permitted on the national theatre : but I wish to be 

spared the contemplation of the ineffable splendor that rests on 

their abiding- place ; and as I consider them too pure, too 

merciful, too frugal, too wise, and too ' honest, — as this world 

goes/ — I say ' non-content ;' — and think, — 

' O England '—model to thy inward greatness, 
Like little body with a mighty heart, — 
What might'st thou do, that honor would thee do, 
Were all thy children kind and natural ! 

To proceed ; * If it be base and injurious to the Queen, to 
{ prejudicate her guilt before condemnation, it is yet more 
1 criminal and rebellious to the whole state, to assume her inno- 
' cence, while so grave an accusation is pending.* And this is 
what you call i generous humanity, ' Alas ! it is too plain that 
you tell the truth when declaring, that ' we have long lost our 
1 old vocabulary, — and with it, I fear, you have lost your sense 
of feeling. Criminal! — rebellious! What — to regard as in- 
nocent those whom the law has not found guilty ! Well may 
Manchester- law be a laughing-stock to the nations ! — well may 
Manchester-civilization be synonymous with iron-bowelled bar- 
barism! — and Manchester-liberty with slavery in its worst estate, 
with something even worse than Egyptian darkness and Egyp- 
tian bondage! c So grave an accusation tool Now really, 
Mr. Home, this is not fair play. You have had your nose in 
the Green Bag ; have seen, for aught I know, and handled, and 
tasted the delicitf within ; you have analyzed its villainy, and 
you call it * grave,' and will not give us a word more of in- 
formation : but this maidenly modesty — this coy reserve, shall 
not avail you ; for by the kindness of ' one in the secret/ I am 
in the secret, and am resolved the mystery shall be a secret no 
longer ; — the truth then is this — disprove it if you can — that 
the real and original charge contained in that bag-full of lies — 
was — that Caroline had begotten a child on the body of 
Barthclomeo. — ' Will you sup with me, Master Gower?' 



44 

Your next paragraph is a piece of most magnificent nonsense. 
( "Not satisfied with postponing the Coronation, for which there 
' is colour of public decency, some journals have the audacity 
1 to point out Hanover, as a proper place to hide the an- 
: ointed Majesty of England, while faction is organizing re- 
1 hellion under the name of his Queen. Who but traitors 
{ dare imagine the dastard infamy^ No: Let the glorious 
' head of Brunswick and of England stand, like Atlas on 
' his eternal base, and from a brow serene, look down on the 
1 storm which breaks beneath his feet, 1 fyc. So it was not the 
ministers, but * some journals (which journals r) that post- 
poned the coronation ! This is news. What follows is doubt- 
less exceedingly wise — all ' absolute wisdom/ but I con- 
fess I do not comprehend it. If 'faction is organizing re- 
i bellion, 9 I cannot very clearly discover the sapience of your re- 
commendation to ' the glorious head of Brunswick. 9 To 
stand ' like Atlas/ with arms a kimbo, appears a singular 
modus operandi in such circumstances : — then he is to 
look from his mouth ' serene, 9 — I beg pardon — from his 
' brow;' or perhaps you mean the brow of a hill ? — but this is 
confusion confounded, and compels me to wait your next edi- 
tion for a light on your meaning. You next observe, ' he is 
1 no illiterate upstart, nor ignorant of the maxims,' (you might 
have added > the morals) l of antiquity. 9 In this we are agreed ; 
and if Mr. Denman is to be credited, ' the glorious head of 
1 Brunswick and of England 1 has studied ' antiquity 1 to some 
purpose, when he has copied so exactly the conduct of one of 
its most accomplished imperial worthies. 

In page 30, you sum up your charges against the hobgoblin 
of Reform which haunts your imagination. Six counts ; and 
very acutely put together. The Pope and Alderman Wood, the 
Queen and the Opposition, Radicalism and Sir C. Wolseley, 
are severally excommunicated, and ' the lower orders' do not 
escape. c While we censure, we excuse and bear with many 
' of the ignorant and ill-informed who bona fide believe her 
* Majesty a most-innocent and much-injured woman. 9 ' Here 
are patience, and mercy, and long-suffering in canonicals ! 



45 

Prattling, however, like f a waiting gentlewoman' about igno- 
rance, is no proof of knowledge; and before you censure, it 
would but exemplify common prudence and common sense, 
were you to see that your own brain is in order, and its cham- 
bers duly stored with sound information. The Queen is 

MOST INNOCENT, AND MOST DEEPLY INJURED, The 

country knows this to be truth, and (thanks to that dirty servi- 
lity which has debased the purest of religions !) were you, 
Rev. Sir, and the whole of the black legion — with the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury at your head, to swear to the contrary, 
not one right-headed and right-hearted Englishman would be- 
lieve you. Pretty ' guardians of morals' truly ! Guardians 
rather of immorality and corruption ! 

Your fears (at page 3*2) appear to have lashed you into mad- 
ness, and you write backwards and forwards at a most surpris- 
ing rate. You dread a death from f- impurity,' and \ the rage 
' of faction; — then, ' the country zoill die of Anglomania, 
4 alias the love of liberty !' then it will not die at all; ' the 
1 wisdom and energy of Parliament' and ' the terror of our 
1 eye, 7 ' will stand the shock of proud revolt.' < A thousand 
i bibles shall fly on our banners,' and c the Lord God of Eng- 
1 land will deliver these ear thb or n Philistines into our hands' 
This is pure unmixed raving. Better take these Bibles home, 
and read them ; and if 1 mistake not, you will soon feel a 
change in our symptoms. Battle, Murder, and our heavenly 
Father, form rather an incongruous group— a trinity of in- 
consistent consubstantialities ! — 

Non bene conveniunt, nee in unci sede morantur. 
I much wish to know your creed. # The phrase * Lo?xi 

* * A gentleman in this city, whose heart is set upon a reformation of 
' manners, gave me not long ago the perusal of his creed, out of which I 

* drew the following dangerous positions, and now I publish them, that the 
1 genuine clergy may guard against them. 1. He believes, that a man may 

* be saved by adhering to naked truth and plain religion. 2. That it is not 
1 damnable, not to believe what we cannot believe. 3. That Christianity is as 

* good a man as Orthodoxy, — saving the judgment of the clergy. 4. That it is 
1 possible for a pastor to havegi:ace in his heart, though he has never a rose in his 



46 

* God of England/ which has just occurred, sounds passing 
strangely in- my ear: would not ' Lord God of 7 Sheppey or 
Shetland, or l Lord God of Walcheren, startle even your 
apprehension? You draw too freely on the bank of faith. 
' Ego et Deus mens,' is at least, as high a crime against hea- 
venly rule, as the proud Cardinal's ' Ego et Rex mens/ was 
against earthly dominion. The creator and preserver of all 
mankind, is no respecter of persons. The ' poor Indian* of ' un- 
tutored mind/ and the wealthy and accomplished European 
noble, are equally his creation and his care. He is the Father 
of All — the Universal Father. This gross assumption of 
exclusive familiarity — of peculiar and particular providence, 
maybe Church of Englandism ; but assuredly it is not the 
Christianity of the Gospel. It is at best a lame device, which 
modern priestcraft has borrowed along with many other mat- 
ters of hocus pocus from the mysteries of ancient paganism ; 
it is a clumsy juggle to cheat mankind out of their common 
sense, — an irreverent abomination, l more honored in the 
' breach than the observance.' 

Till I again attend you, do me the favor to meditate the fol- 

* hat, and that he may tell truth, and instruct the people, though he be not 
1 wrapped up in twenty ells of Holland. 5. That an innocent infant may be 

* saved, without a parson'' s dropping water vpon its face, 6. That a well dis- 

* posed person may eat bread, and drink wine, in remembrance of our Saviour's 
1 death, without the priest's form of words, — which yet do not change the ele- 

* merits, which yet are a proper sacrifice, which yet is not flesh and blood. 7 . 
' That God may possibly pardon a repenting sinner, though the parson do not ab„ 
1 solutely give his consent, and order him so to do. 8. That a man may venture 
1 to understand the understandable parts of Scripture. 9. That there is such a 
1 thing as a scrupulous conscience ;— with submission to the parson. 10. That a 
1 man may keep his oath to King George, and yet not be damned for it; — again 
1 saving the opinion and practice of the High Church. 11. That the clergy, as 

* icell as others, would be better if they had fewer faults. 12. Thai dissenters are 
'* our fellow-creatures. 13. That religion is a national thing. My acquaint- 
i ance abovementioned holds all these and more such heretical notions, — 
' which, were they tolerated, would bring no small danger to the church. 
'But, I hope, her genuine sons will continue their zeal, and defend her 
e against them all.' — Thomas Gordon. An apology for the Danger of the 
Church, proving, that the Church is, and ought to be always in danger, 
and that it would be dangerous for her to be out of danger, 1719. 



47 

lowing extract from Scripture : it is Jeremiah (c. 20. v. 10.) 
that speaks, complaining of treachery; and it dovetails in well 
with the time. As it was in the beginning,— 

backwounding calumny 
The fairest virtue strikes. 
Taken as your next Sunday's text, and illustrated by the splen- 
dor of your eloquence, and the enthusiasm of your loyalty, it 
cannot fail of its due and deep impression on your congrega- 
tion. ' For I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side : 
' Report, say they, and we will report it: all my familiars 
' watched for my halting, saying, peradventure he will be 
' enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take 
' our revenge on him. But the Lord is with me as a mighty 
s terrible one ; therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and 
1 they shall not prevail, they shall be greatly ashamed; for 
'. they shall not prosper ; their everlasting confusion shall 
' never be forgotten. — Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the 
' Lord ; for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the 
1 hand of evil doers! 

This excerpt is the more curious, as rumour has assigned it a 
place in the forthcoming Index Expurgatorius; and says further, 
that it will be expunged in the new edition of the Bible prepar- 
ing by my Lords of the episcopal conclave : nor can it fail to 
gratify every truly ' loyaV subject, to hear, that the scissars of 
Mr. Sackbut Southey have completed the castration of Taci- 
tus, and that the l old Pagan' already gone to press, will be 
duly presented to the sovereign at the next levee. — * That's the 
' humor of it I' 

I am, Rev. Sir, Yours, &c. 



LETTER VII. 

Reverend Sir, 
As the piece of autobiography, in page 32, seems to have 
lost its way, and blindly stumbled into its present graceless si- 



48 



tuation, I shall for the present leave it unnoticed, and proceed 
to examine your apologetic review of the 

Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong, — 
which for a quarter of a century have rained sorrows on the 
head of our illustrious sufferer. This paragraph (pp. 33 and 
54,) is, indeed, a pretty dish of conceits and fancies, an incom- 
parable confection, a choice ollapodrida of truth and false- 
hood, argument and imagination, pathos and pasquinade, — > 
skilfully concocted, and served up with infinite taste. ' She 
' was/ you say, ( the neglected and forsaken wife of youth/ 
and * no man felt more for her /' — i yet, even then, she was 

* not the only wife, in whose bosom was planted the thorn of 
' domestic infelicity !' And who dreamt that she was ? What 
the people contend, is, not that she was the ' only wretched 
wife, but that of these unfortunates she was the most wretch- 
ed, — not that she was the ' only/ but the most cruelly ill 
treated and persecuted ; a proposition more easily evaded, 
Rev. Sir, than overthrown. Then, what arrogance to affirm, 
that ' no man felt more for her' than yourself ! What ! — feel 
more for a wife than the man who at the altar of his God had 
sworn — his life's protection, and love, and nourishment, to 
her? — you feel more for his own Queen than ' England's 
' King' himself — than ' the dignified head of the Church and 

* State of England' — than ' the glorious head of Brunszeick 
1 and of England T — why, were you, as honest Donne says, 
1 to outswear the Litany/ in support of such a maudlin asser- 
tion, where is the man to be found that would believe you ? 
— nay, were you even to cast off all human sympathy, and 
swear that ' no man felt more' of ' envy, hatred, malice, and 
1 all uncharitableness , towards this blighted scion of royalty 
— you could not be believed ; for, notwithstanding your strong 
claims to this enviable distinction, there is, at least, one more 
worthy than yourself. Having generalized her Majesty's 
misery to your satisfaction, you very kindly particularize the 
alleviations — levamina vita — that blessed her; and is it 



49 

sheer ignorance or wilful deception that prompts you to cant 
about her peculiar and ultra ' consolations f ' She was great 

* England's future Queen, and the mother of a lovely daugh- 
1 ter destined to sway her sceptre '• — granted : but is it not 
clear as the day-star, that her sorrows must have been as ex- 
clusively great, and as exclusively her own, as such ' consola- 

* tions f — and must not her very elevation have quickened the 

sense of suffering, and sharpened the pangs of marital neglect 

and abandonment ? Unquestionably : and as pain has a more 

powerful control over the human temperament than pleasure, as 

Our pains are real things, and all 
Our pleasures but fantastical, — 

by that difference at least — even on your own postulates — must 
her trials in all their manifold variety of affliction have sur- 
passed those of all other women. 

Enough has already been said of the * whisper' that ' began 

* to report the levities,' and likewise of the * public investiga- 
6 tion' — the delicate of that ilk ; but I cannot pass without 
comment your strange confession, that ' when the Princess 
' threw herself into the arms of the Opposition, the tide of 
' opinion began to turn against her.' indeed ! — and have 
you then forgotten, that your own dear Eldon, and Canning, 
and Castlereagh, and Perceval, were ' the arms' — aye, and the 
legs too — * of Opposition at the moment in question ? — and 
that their use — or rather abuse — of the unsuspecting confi- 
dence of their illustrious client, enabled these gold-hunters to 
clamber into the possession of pension, place, and power? 
Truly, these worthies need not enemies — to dig up, and cleanse, 
and smelt, for the use of history, the base ore of their iniquity, — 
while such skilful miners and refiners as our Home of Sal- 
ford, Norfolk Burgess, Cunningham of Harrow, Butler of 
Chelsea, Liverpool Blacow, convicted of libel, and thou- 
sands more — parsons all, — ply the friendly task of purifying it 
from the dross of virtue and the scurf of good character. 
But, Master Home out-Herods Herod ; for not content with 
this slur in gross, on the living and the dead, he picks a crow 
individually with the Orator, — telling us, that ( while she con- 



50 

■ tinned in England, the Princess kept a strong hold on the 
( feeling of wise and good men! Then what shall we predi- 
cate of the traitor, that — o'ermastering the counsels of ho- 
nesty — cut the cable of safety, and left the gallant keel 
adrift on a lee-shore at the mercy of the elements ? Go 
to, reverend Defender of the Faith of Corruption ! We 
have had something more than enough of the base-born Lis- 
bon-jobber. George Ogden Canning is not a name calcu- 
lated for ' the grace and ornament' of honorable society ; 
nor are the great and good deeds of this political trickster, ex- 
actly suited to sweeten an Englishman's imagination. But 
whisper' now got bolder : feeling her way, sly rogue ! she be- 
gan to wag her loose tongue more freely, f When English- 
< men returning from travel, and foreigners touching on our 
' coasts, loudly circulated the tale of national dishonor, what 
' could the Regent do, but to' (why to ?) ' inquire by an 
' honorable commission into the truth of an infamy so 
' publicly talked off Now here is something like ' blushing, 
e retiring modesty! Why, what ails ye, parson ? — deferring to 
your readers ? — appealing to them, and in behalf of the Re- 
gent too ! Whence this new condescension — this grace un- 
wonted ? Forewarned, — 

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes : — 

yet I cannot control your magic power, nor burst the bonds of 
destiny. Having tasted the fatal cup, its influence is upon 
me, a dream of unrivalled triumphs fills my wondering senses, 
and, transported already to the market of villainy in Milan, I 
see — what Tilburina never saw ; — I see Cooke and Reganti, 
and Browne, and Vilmacarti, and Powell, and Rastelli— -I see 
— treason and treachery, and ' all unutterable things/ — ' I see 
—I see'— Ah !— 

Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! / 
zee are indeed, most profound Sir, on holy ground, trembling 
as we gaze on the mysterious objects around us. * Truth of 
' an infamy! € An honorable Commission,' by all means, to 
examine the root, branches, and blossom of this public scan- 



51 

dal, — to measure from rump to tip the length of this f dis- 
* graceful tail 1 ' of national dishonor !' Was this done ? Truth 
answers no ; and you will scarcely dare to ' tell truth, she is 
a liar/ — O no ! you will leave that bravery to your supreme 
head, to the arch dignity, to the potent — 

The secret enemy, whose sleepless eye, 
Stands centinel, accuser, judge, and spy. 

You proceed : — * the keeping back the results of those in- 
' quiries so long, and the reluctance with which they were pro- 
' duced, argue delicacy, feeling, consideration, and honor. 
Strange notions these ! The * old vocabulary is certainly 
lost : for if you are right here, then are our Habeas Corpus 
Act and all our statutes of limitation, criminal and civil, 
most indelicate, unfeeling, inconsiderate, and dishonorable acts 
of legislation. Is suspended character so delectable a state of 
existence ? Is it your conception * of law and liberty unim- 
' paired} that slander and malice may conspire against a good 
name, and whisper away character, and talk of proof which 
they have bagged and sealed, yet for years refuse the produc- 
tion of it, — that they may spread their poison at leisure, through 
half a lifetime — and that law can administer no antidote, till it 
shall please these demons to confer the favor of an opportu- 
nity ? ' Hast any philosophy in thee ?' To it, then, and write me 
au essay to prove that suspended animation is the very extacy 
of animal enjoyment. — Verily, l thou art in a parlous state,' 
Parson ! 

I scarcely need remark on your passing glance at the immor- 
tal protocols, and the kneeling and handkissing expedition to 
Portman Street, except that every snug, in the ' life and for- 
tune* world, every 

tool 

Which knaves do work with — called a fool, 

S 

shares in your astonishment at her Majesty's ' inexorable* in- 
flexibility. The refusal of so modest a request, as simply to 
cancel her rights and sign away her honesty, — certainly betrays 
an unexampled perversity of heart and head, disgraceful alike 
to her rank, her sex, and her country. ' It therefore became 



52 

* a measure of imperious necessity to establish the honor of 
' the kingdom by a solemn inquiry; that there might be ful- 
filled what was spoken by a wizard of old ; — 

The judge shall job, the bishop bite the town, 
And mighty dukes pack i votes ' for half a crown. 

' Establish the honor!' establish the figs-ends. A precious 
solemnity truly and sufficiently delicate withal, where might be 
seen the princes and proud aristocracy of this proud country, 
and her lordly prelacy, her Right Reverends, — diving into cham- 
ber utensils, expounding the slang of the bordelloes, and ana- 
lyzing the stains of bed linen ! But I shall borrow an appro- 
priate feather out of your * owlet wing/ to conclude this para- 
graph. ' "Never did the wit and satire of Cervantes imagine 

* any thing more ludicrous, than toe are acting in real life. 
1 The Quixotism he exposes is comparatively innocent : ours 
' is pure crime, and sport for devils. Don Quixote 
1 and honest Sancho Panza have been, and shall be, a health- 
1 ful laugh to, Europe; but what eulogy shall we pass on 9 the 
judge-and-jury accusers of Queen Caroline ? 

It gives me infinite delight, whenever your German phos- 
phorus-box emits even a scintillation of reason and sound Eng- 
lish sentiment. I suffer none of these your brighter ideas to 
pass uncommended ; but blame not your admiring transcriber, 
if these coruscations are — 

Like Angel-visits — brief and far between. 

Amidst a heap of nihilipili in page 35, gleams a transient flash 
of truth : ' The nation must not be sacrificed to any feel- 

( ING OF AN INDIVIDUAL, HOWEVER ILLUSTRIOUS ; 

' and every Englishman, and especially both Houses of Par- 
€ liament, are called upon to support and countenance the 
1 administration of impartial justice/ A noble and 
manly call! — and it has not been made in vain: it has been 
answered. — But Master Parson, you have cut yourself! Now, 
why will you play thus with double-edge tools ? 

You go on prating very flippantly of the angelic temper. As 
I am utterly ignorant of the precise character — the definite ex- 
tent—of ' the purity and power of angels/ I cannot correctly 



53 

estimate your assertion, that human and angelic innocence are 
one and the same : aud as you are a believer in ' our Church 1 
doctrine of * Original Sin/ and consequently appreciate duly the 
frailty of our carnal nature, perhaps you can tell me how hu- 
man virtue of any kind can be the same as angelic virtue. 
Temperance in eating is not assuredly the same virtue in a 
man with a locked jaw, as in one of strong health and naturally 
inordinate appetite. Chastity at three score — is essentially 
different from chastity at one score years. Then, if this dis- 
tinction rules in man ' himself alone/ how shall he, in the po- 
verty of human desert — in the acknowledged imperfection of 
his nature — pretend to identity of character with the spirits of 
the just made perfect ? ' The triumph of an angel will be 
1 peaceable. My only fear is, that her Majesty is guilty, 
' and zvill be found so. 3 Had you written, only hope — 
instead, your page had been more consistent ; and surely your 
1 wish was father to that thought/ or you had not gone about 
to provide so carefully against the consequences you presume 
would follow the proof of guilt. When you next start this 
topic, try if you cannot compliment decency by covering the 
nakedness of your real sentiments a little better, or their mani- 
fest exposure may subject you to ridicule. Already, with the 

poet, 

Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread, 
Are notice takin! 

Poet? — yes, but what has Parson Home and his * Crisis' to 
do with Parnassus ? Why, truly, he has discovered what was 
never dreamt of in our philosophy : — hear him. ' Old Horace, 
' though a Pagan, spoke nobly, — 

Dulce et decorum est pro patri& mori.' 
' Though a Pagan F As if noble sentiment delivered in noble 
language was exclusively to be found in i our Church !' And 
this too sent forth by one who l claims to be a gentleman by 
1 education' ! Did you, Rev. Sir, ever hear of any wisdom in 
heathen Greece, or heathen Rome?— (it were, marvellous if 
you had, when you can speak thus of their worthies :) and if 
Socrates, Epictetus, and Plato, Cicero, Horace, and Seneca, 



54 

were Pagans, — does not that consideration swell the glory of 

their fame, and cast a shade of comparative insignificance on 

the sorry pretensions of others, not * Pagans' — but Parsons,— 

in whom 

passion burns, — 

And atheism and religion take their turns ? 
But, as you respect established institutions, do not provoke 
comparison. You may know what such Pagans knew not, 
but it does not exactly follow that you are practically better or 
wiser in your generation.* 

Your next page (36) is prodigiously fine. For brilliancy of 
language, correctness of figure, and wondrous illumination of 
your subject, it is beyond any praise of mine. The four ele- 
ments are pressed into your service, but air seems to bear off 
the palm of victory ; as Peter Quince says, \ it is nothing but 
roaring.' Now for a spice of your quality. * The Opposi- 
' Hon freely throw the seeds of fire on combustible materials, 
? and zvould gladly blow up a forecastle and fire the rigging, 
' provided the Ministers be blown overboard, no matter whe- 
' ther it be with their heads or without them; and zvhen they 
( have brought their Sovereign to their feet, they will then 
' evince their loyalty, extinguish the flames, bring the wreck 
' into port, and assume credit for saving the hull of a vessel 
' which themselves had wrecked. Such experiments are equal- 
* ly atrocious and perilous.' (Amazing !) ' What, if the fire 
' kindle so rapidly fore and aft, and explode every magazine,' 

* See what a celebrated divine of * our Church,' aud what is more — an ab- 
horrer of preferment, and a philosopher, has said of certain ' Pagans, whom 
he has not scorned to class with the venerable confessors of Christianity. 
i Such as Msop and Socrates, the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs, with sundry 
1 other wise and good men in all ages and places, — who yet not being so well 
1 aware of the ill-condition and ttstiness of this wicked world — of which they 
1 have truly professed themselves no citizens, but strangers, — have suffered the 
< greatest mischiefs that can happen to human nature, by their innocent meaning 
1 and intermeddling in alienci republic^. ; it having usually been more 
1 safe, craftily and cautiously to undermine the honor of 
1 God, than plainly and honestly to seek the good and wel- 
'fare of men.'— Dr, Henry More. An Antidote against Atheism. 
Second Edition. 1655. 



55 

aye, the whole nine hundred and ninety-nine, — f and blow the 
' vessel into a thousand pieces, will it exonerate the Opposi- 
( tion then to say — We did not mean it f St. Luke's to the 
life ! Why, surely, Sir, * education' has done as little for you 
as for Admiral Jordan, whose intelligent interrogations on the 
subject of the binnacle will never be forgotten. God help 
those in the cabin when the forecastle is blown up, and the 
rigging is fired ! — and as to * heads' — unless indeed the crew 
were properly supplied with cork jackets, and asbestos shirts, 
caps, and trowsers, — it matters little whether they wore them 
on their shoulders, or under their arms — as St. Patrick is re- 
ported to have gone to sea after his martyrdom. But I intreat 
you to spare us : the wine is new and potent, and we may not 
brave the intoxicating draught with impunity. 

Evoe ! pai ce Liber — 



Parce gravi metnende thyrso! 
You next complain of the ' measured dignity,' the ' high 
* polish, and leniency of expression, in the language of the 
1 Sovereign and of both Houses 7 — Opposition of course in- 
clusive ; — and you tell us that ' dignity,' $ polish,' and c sua- 
' vity,' \ are here misplaced,' — nay they ' are worse than an 
f incumbrance f Well, I certainly am not surprised to see you 
floundering in a lower deep — beneath the deep of Radicalism 
— for it seems to be your own proper element. So then, 
meanness, vulgarity, and waspishness, were the proper tone of 
Royal and Parliamentary language in these new times, accord- 
ing to your reverend and sapient opinion ? Alas ! ' there is 
death in the pot/ if this is your Salford Salmagundi ! In your 
30th page, you say that without the wisdom of Wood, and 
the audacity of Wolseley united, { no private individual will 
f have the hardihood to dictate to that august assembly ;' and 
1 infer that you judged it specially fitting to give us a specimen 
of hardy dictation, that in time to come no man should doubt 
your possession of these conjunct faculties — this wise audacity 
— this audacious wisdom. You have seen much, but you 
know more, — have often gone, I dare say, on € . wild travels/ 
though no Corinthian, — and if you never voyaged in a Sicilian 



56 

polacre, have been blessed with a better birth in the * ship of 
Fools/ It was doubtless at this period of your efflorescent 
age, that experience taught you the harmony of inconsistencies, 
and the concordance of contradictions, and time has but ripened 
your excelling faculties. You can prove truth in one page to 
be falsehood in another, — impudence in Alderman Wood, to 
be modesty — ' blushing, retiring, modesty, in Parson Home : 
it is a rare talent of your own, arid you may safely predicate of 
it — in the phrase of Holofernes the pedagogue,- — ' It is a gift 
that I have, simple, simple.' Badinage apart, I bid you 
good bye, — but remember — * virtue is no horn maker, 

( AND MY ROSALIND IS VIRTUOUS.' 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER VIII. 

Reverend Sir, 
Having scrambled ashore very worshipfully, after the late 
effective display of nautical stratagem, you treat us on our own 
element with a further developement of your flaming powers. 
The ghost of the French Revolution, with many a mortal 
murder on its crown, is now conjured up out of the crater of a 
pyrosanguineous volcano, covering f earth and sea with fire 
( and blood. 7 i A thousand thunders utter their voices' — 
< stentraphonic of course, — and we breathe in 1 a world of 
* horrors' In this terrific hour, your wisdom shines forth in 
native majesty. f Such fearful signs, portents, and prodigies / 
you tell us, * as now amaze our senses, were precursors of the 
1 explosion] &c. and ' the same prodigies repeated in our land 
4 seem to announce a repetition of similar judgments.' What 
a superb specimen of phantasmagoria ! — how original — thus to 
inculcate policy by shadows, and teach morality by optical de- 
ception ! — for it is altogether ' a delirious dream,' a mere 
vision peopled by fear, a phantom flitting in the troubled at- 
mosphere of mental delusion. Your senses are not engaged 
in their proper offices. You have your faculties playing at 



57 

cross-questions or hide-and-seek, instead of attending to their 

respective duties, nor are they forthcoming when most wanted, 

— in this — resembling the wits of those notables, the Rosicru- 

cians, whose — 

virtuosis 

Can see with ears and hear with noses 5 

And when they neither see nor hear, 

Have more than both supplied by fear. 
Could you prove to a demonstration, that this happy island — 
* the envy of surrounding nations, and the admiration of the 
world,' — was ground down by taxation of endless and vicious 
variety, a prey to tax-farmers, tax-gatherers, and tax-eaters; — 
that it was overrun by a wild herd of over-grown and privi- 
leged aristocratical vagabonds, rioting in wasteful luxury, and 
trampling under foot the bread of the poor ; — that it was steri- 
lized by a swarm of black vermin calling itself the Church, 
pampered —and lazy except in acting mischief; — that it enjoyed 
neither the liberty of speech, the liberty of person, nor the li- 
berty of the press; — that it was overseered by a f grand mon- 
arque' — conniving at these flagrant abuses — deaf to these cry- 
ing sins— if not promoting and cherishing them, — and at all 
events sharing the fruits of misrule, and upholding a court — the 
hot-bed of foul and sensual abominations; — and that all this, 
and even worse, was true as heaven, — when it assuredly is 
' false as hell ;' — then would your speculation be sound, for these 
were the ' fearful signs' that preceded the 'judgments in 
France. But where shall we look for the counterpart in 
Britain ? If it pleased a few powerful miscreants to break 
down the pales of law for the manly purpose of destroy- 
ing Antoinette ; — if the wigs and clouts of legal forms were 
thrown into court to hide the nakedness of a worse than Ma- 
hometan despotism ; — if, when all her natural protectors were 
afar off, or dead and gone, — a savage and infuriate faction set on 
this ill-fated daughter of royalty — more like cannibals than 
Christians ; — if the vampires thirsted and drank her blood ; — 
that were a 'judgment' with a vengeance ! — but, in the name of 
wonder, Master Melville, what has all this to do with us? Surely 
you cannot be so astute as to think there is any parallel between 

1 



$8 

tile conduct of the French Jacobins of 1793, and the English Ja- 
cobins of 1820 ? You seem to be dwelling in the antipodes of our 
Utopia , and your brain is haunted by visions of darkness and 
death, while ours is filled with happy imaginings and para- 
disaical conceits. The gabelles trouble not us, — a noblesse 
and a clergy licenced in atrocity — we know not, — slavery can- 
not endure the atmosphere of Britain, — we have a King 
' that can do no wrong/ and a moral court, cherished by the 
vivifying beams of royal example. So much for ' signs/ and 
as to 'judgments,' we look in vain for their presence. The 
fences of our law are perfect, — our courts are clothed with de- 
corum, and hallowed by justice, — tyranny is unknown, — fac- 
tion is trodden under foot, — the friends and supporters of the 
throne are hearty in the good cause, and at their posts, — Chris- 
tianity is flourishing in apostolic purity, — and charity, bright and 
genial as the sun, is pouring forth daily floods of light, life, and 
health, on a contented, prosperous, and happy people; — 

Pan etiam Arcadia mecum si judice certet, 
Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se judice victum. 

Such are the blessings of our incomparable constitution when 
wisely administered; — and fortunately for us and ours, the 
horrors you would transplant into this garden of Eden, exist 
but in your distempered imagination: — but I cry your mercy, 
Reverend Sir, — alas ! there is one l prodigy that had escaped 
remark, — one 'portent 7 that had slipped my observation, — a 
' j earful sign/ in a different quarter of the overhanging politi- 
cal firmament, moving in 

glory obscnr'd : as when the sun new risen 



Looks through the horizontal misty air, 
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon 
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations, and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs. — — 

for thus shorn and veiled by the pestilent exhalations from the 
swamps of hatred, thus dimmed and eclipsed by the intervening 
disk of envious power, appears the Queen Consort of England. 
Ah ! Sir, you are a reverend dreamer, a clever reasoner, — but 



5$ 

your wits were unquestionably at sea, when you wandered into 
this field of awkward and ominous comparison. The sedi- 
tious sows dissension, and poisons a nation's health — the blas- 
phemer strives to debase religion, the leveller attempts to pros- 
trate the claims of nobility and high rank, the republican 
wishes to set aside royalty altogether ; but it is your true Ja- 
cobin alone that would strike a woman — that would kill a 
Queen. Now, Parson, why will you thus butt your friends 
with your crooked horn ? Why will you pester their jaded 
spirits with such ' defences' as this ? Although not so gross as 
Ethelston perhaps, nor so fortunate as either Ethelston or 
Hay, you are a warm admirer of their absolute wisdom, and 
certainly have bestirred yourself lustily in the loyal job of shor- 
ing up the crazy fabric of administration ; but all will not do, 
the rats are already quitting, the cumbrous nuisance already 
totters, and the next gale of popular expression shall level it on 
the earth, a mass of irreparable ruins. 

Having devoted some seven or eight of your pages to a 
vindication of the counsels of the Manchester New Bailey, and 
an apology for the consequent bloodshed at Peterloo, I was 
startled to hear you very seriously declare, (at 37), that * we 
* have heard of massacres ,' ? but we have not seen nor felt 
1 them.' Feeling of course is in your case entirely out of the 
question; but, 

by your priesthood, tell me what you are, — 

that you alone could not see, what was seen — aye, and felt too 
— by every man, woman, and child in the three kingdoms. 
The f patricidal gore' poured forth on the 16th of August, 
is not sunk into the earth; it is yet crimson as when it first 
leaped after the sabres that drew it, and cried aloud to the 
God of justice and judgment; — his chariot-wheels are already 
within hearing. 

You plunge onward from bad to worse, from folly to sheer 
nonsense, and thence to the very edge of criminal assumption. 
I am well aware, that although — 

Dulness is sacred in a sound divine,— 

a harmless laugh at its contrarious antics and ridiculous mum? 



60 



mcries, is, in a spectator— blessed with lighter spirits, and 
coiled in a less holy profession, an offence of comparatively 
venial character, — 

Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere Manes ; 

but, when a layman dares to speak of the wickedness of a 
church, he has sinned mortally, and past all pardon ; the award 
is thundered from the pulpit, he is denounced as an excommu- 
nicated blasphemer, and consigned most religiously to fire and 
faggot in this world, and to fire and brimstone hereafter : — a 
glorious triumph, and highly to be applauded ! I am not dis- 
turbed however, or deterred by clerical anathemas ; but your 
closing speculations are so thickly bestrewn with your proper 
peculiarities of sentiment and argument, that each page would 
alone furnish a score of texts for a critical preacher, and the dif- 
ficulty of selection consequently becomes appalling: — I pro- 
ceed. 'Never was the nation so generally cor- 

' RUPTED, SO TAINTED WITH ATROCIOUS CRIME, AND 
' SO TOTALLY DEVOID OF ALL MORAL PRINCIPLE. 

' Except God had left us a remnant, well might he make us 
' as Sodom and Gomorrah.'* Talk of the rant of the Ta- 
bernacle ! Why, here is all Bedlam broken loose upon us, 
in the person of a Salford parson! ' the nation never 
' so corrupted ? What! — and this, after an hundred 
and thirty years of ' the full reign of English law and liberty V 
This, in a land which enjoys * liberty of the purest kind, of 

* The Church of England, having for an hundred and sixty years enjoyed 
wealth, power, and liberty — unbounded, exclusive, and undisturbed, and 
consequently had all the assistance of all secular means, is now told to her 
teeth by one of her own ministers — Et tu Brute ! — that this nation was never 
— no, not even under Heathenism or Popery — so rotten as at the present 
hour ! Whether, after this she will dare to call herself the only true Church, 
is not of much consequence ; but it does nearly concern her venerable self 
to shew forth something of the true character of useful piety. I shall 
leave her to be tried by the sound test of an old Englishman, from which I 
most heartily wish her a good deliverance. ' Holiness of life, being the great 
' duty of every Christian, is doubtless too a grand glory to any Church ; and that 
' religion, the principles whereof do most effectually lead to sincerity therein, does 
1 deserve to bear away the belV Sir Christopher Wyvill, Baronet. 
The Pretensions of the Triple Crown Examined. 1672. 



61 



' the noblest and best established root T This, in old England 
' • — under the paternal sceptre of the Princes of the house of 
1 Brunswick T This, under a constitution envied and ad- 
mired of the world, and in the first year of the reign of king 
George the Fourth ? This, notwithstanding i the extended ope- 
' ration of a Bible Society of all Christendom,' and ' the 
( strenuous exertions of the clergy"? And this, after fighting 
and conquering — { for God was on our side; and the 
' destroyer brought a prisoner to our coast T Shame, 
shame, on such scurrilous aspersions, 'false as they are filthy!' 
Were this scandalous charge grounded in truth, I cannot con- 
ceive a stronger argument for the immediate exportation of 
Kings, Lords, and Commons, Church and all, to Melville 
island or New Shetland. Pretty work, indeed, are you ma- 
king with your bantling! Your 'Moral and Political 
1 Crisis' is 'grand' and ' solemn' enough to satisfy the most 
fiery alarmist ; for Were I to concede the truth of your posi- 
tion, does it not follow, that government, instead of a bles- 
sing, is and has been a curse to this deluded people, — that 
Church and King are worse than useless, and must have 
contributed their ample share to the vice and corruption of 
the age, — that even the days of the Eighth Harry, and ' bloody* 
Mary, and the first Charles and his amiable liberty-loving 
sons, were more pure and untainted than ours, and the nation 
of course infinitely more happy, — arid that in fact, any change 
must be a change for the better ? Then, your illustration 
from Genesis, — what does that mean? 'Except God had 

' left' does not this imply that God had the power to 

take, and did take part — the major part — else, how could he 
' leave a remnant f — and, if he had the power and the will, 
which you will hardly deny, to take the whole, — how do you 
prove that this act of divine volition should be visited as a 
crime on man, — and that, if it had pleased God not ' to leave 
1 remnant, well might he make us-as the cities in question ? 
Now really, Mr. Home, this is all very bad, and calls for the 
severest reprobation. It is supporting religion, as the ultra- 
loyal support the throne — by degrading its character, and mis- 



62 

taking its attributes. Had you been by Bridewell on the 
glorious day immortalized by the satirist, you had certainly 
carried off c the journals and the lead' — the noble prizes of 
stream-pollution and diving, — Arnall's honors had been solely 
yours ; — 

No crab more active in the dirty dance, 
Downward to climb, or backward to advance. 

In page 38, you puzzle us with a little more i irony J 

* Our signs, 1 forsooth, \ are written in such mystic characters, 
( as to require the wisdom of a Daniel to decipher them. 
c Infatuation is a prominent letter of the writing.' It 
certainly required no Daniel to expound that character, for a 
child may run and read it. The ministers have been amusing 
themselves, by declining this noun substantive, while you were 
engaged in conjugating the verb jargonize ; and it must be 
allowed, that you are all very perfect in your lessons ; but it 
will shock their natural modesty to be thus publicly praised, 
and you should not have printed their meritorious ability. Yes, 
6 infatuation is a prominent letter;' and, allow me to add, 
' the experience of all ages has recorded the prophecy of 
'common sense,--Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat' 

A brief but masterly sketch of Radicalism adorns your 
next paragraph, which cannot fail to interest and amuse, 
e The Radicals maybe classed into deceivers, and de- 
' ceived ; the first, pure rascals, unmixed with any alloy of 

* virtue ; the second, pure ignorance, xoith hardly three grains 
c of sense' The more's the pity ! Deceit is a damnable vice* 
and has been so counted ever since Satan played off his cunning 
upon Eve in Paradise ; it is a rascally vice, and is never found 
in good company, although it may occasionally be seen linked 
arm in arm between Church and Law ; and it is a lying false- 
hearted devil, that beards truth in the street, and elbows honesty 
into the kennel. But, is the f Deceiver' as well as the i Radical' 
confined to ' the lower orders ?' And, perhaps, you can tell 
me, whether the class of ' Radicals — Deceivers" comprizes all 
the ' pure rascals' in the island ? — and if not, let me further 
trouble you to say, whether such demons, — (for, as they can 



63 

have rto touch whatever of virtue or human sympathy, I can'-* 
not term them men,) — may not be found at least as plentifully 
in the higher ranks, and in the ranks of exclusive loyalty, as in 
the baser castes of the community. Neither Laud nor Bon- 
ner, Scfoggs nor Jefferies, were Radicals, — yet these probably 
are very superior examples of your standard rascal-purity ; and 
many other prelates and judges might be named, other mem- 
bers of the Church, the Bar, the State and its government, who 
have proudly emulated their superlative glories : nor have 
Princes declined the race ; and as for nobles — they stand en- 
rolled as victors in numberless instances in the Olympics of in- 
famy. Now your second class — the ignorants — I should com- 
passionate, did I not observe that you have very carefully placed 
them outside the pale of moral responsibility — as the law very 
properly deals with idiots and lunatics. Indeed radical-natu- 
rals had been a more correct designation of this race of poli- 
ticians,— ^-because deceit cannot be practised on beings utterly 
void of all knowledge, and senseless into the bargain : stocks 
and stones are not subjects for a deceiver to operate upon. — 
But, this modicum of ' three grains ! ' — ' Error i' the bill, 
sir; error i' the bill/ How unkind in you, Rev. Sir, to sup- 
press the mention of the definite weight that kicks the beam 
when common sense loads the opposing scale! — I could then 
have estimated exactly the wretchedness of * radical ignor- 
1 ance:' but you will oblige me by saying how many additional 
grains are necessary to render ' pure ignorance' fit for the pul- 
pit. I have washed many a sieve of the river-sand of your in- 
tellect — which should flow from a richer head than either the Ta- 
gus or Pactolus, — and with what indifferent success, it boots 
not to dwell on, — it is verily a worthless reckoning. The 
truth is, Reverend Sir, that * pure rascality no more than 
' pure ignorance? is peculiar to Radicalism ; — they live on the 
emineuces and hill sides, as well as in the valleys of society,-— 
and are tenants of its castles and palaces as well as of its cot- 
tages. If you are not a natural, you know this truth as well as 
the world and I know it ; but there is an eloquent difference 
between us, the character of which may be readily discovered 



64 

on the very surface of our relative situations, the effect of 

which is — that you dare not confess it, — and I — the contrary. 

My next shall close the outstanding account between us, and 

I am, 

Yours, &c. 

LETTER IX. 

Reverend Sir, 

I now have the gratification of complimenting you on your 
timely discovery that there are infelicities peculiar to royalty. 
Having discovered that it is necessary you should offer more 
incense before the throne, in the hurry of business you seem 
to have forgotten, you had told us in a former page that 
royal miseries were comparatively light, in that they were met 
by countervailing and peculiar ' consolations? but you then 
were speaking of the Queen. I should not however have 
recalled this to your recollection, had your passing sentiment 
held a moderate tone > but so doleful is your dump — so woe- 
ful your lamentation — that I was involuntarily beguiled of my 
tears ere it was finished, and reflection telling me all was not 
right, the suspicion was confirmed by a second reading. * How 
' wretched/ you exclaim, ' is the nativity of kings ! Were it 
' not infamy to desert the high station to which Providence 
i has called them y what man of sense and piety would be pre- 
\ vailed on to take a diadem T I pause on the word * Provi- 
' dence,' euveloped as it is in mystification, and would ask, 
what idea you attach to it ? Conceding, as I conscientiously 
do, that every sovereign — regnant at this hour — is called to 
empire by the inscrutable wisdom of God, — you surely will as 
freely allow, that were they to a man displaced to-morrow, 
such act of dethronement would be as purely aud directly the 
expressed will of the Deity — 

Who sees with equal eye, as Lord of all, 
A hero perish — or a sparrow fall. 

I speak advisedly in saying, that Charles V. of Spain and Ger- 
many was called to a monastery as clearly as to a palace, — the 



65 

First Charles of England to a scaffold, as loudly as to a throne. 
Nero was called to empire, and Trajan was but called : Wil- 
liam the Norman, Cromwell, and Buonaparte, could plead as 
much ' Divine Right/ as many ' Legitimates ;' and Henry 
VIII. had as regular a summons to the English crown as 
George the Fourth. If I am correct in this view, what, let 
me ask you, is the idea you here attach to * infamy f It much 
amazes me, I must confess, to read, (as I am doomed to read 
too often,) the strange limitations planted by divines of the 
established, as well as other sects, at the very threshold of Hea- 
ven. All alike, in so many words, attribute unbounded omni- 
science, prescience, omnipotence, to one common God and 
Father,-r-and yet in the same breath, some will deny him con- 
trol over his creation. How dare you, Rev. Sir, presume to 
pass to some black spirit of your imagination, what your men- 
tal blindness may please to deem evil? What disconcerts you t 
may gratify another : the rain that steeps you in discomfort, 
fructifies the field of your neighbour ; the snowfall that blocks 
up your gate, is pregnant with vernal leaf, and summer blos- 
som, and autumnal fruit ; and the hurricane that overturns the 
towers of the proud, the high, and the mighty, and levels even 
the humble cottage of the poor, is a dispenser of future health 
and enjoyment to the entire realm of nature. The evidences 
of these facts are plain as the sun, and common as the air ; and 
although in the moral world we cannot clearly substantiate an 
exact parallel,— he must be a bold spirit that would directly 
gainsay its existence. For myself, I am content to hold that 
all is from God ; and thus thinking and believing, I am happy 
in the thought and belief, that as it is, better or worse in hu- 
man conception, it exists for the wisest and best of purposes. 
I am not sufficiently learned to say whether this is orthodoxy, 
but I am impregnably assured that it is Christianity. There 
is another singular claw protruding from this heel of your argu- 
ment. You assume it/ infamous' in a Legitimate ( to desert 1 
a throne, — his t sense and piety restrain him. Now, since 
we have had so few instances of desertion in the last fifty 
years, will you tell me — whether ' sense and piety alone con- 



66 

line existing rulers in the seat of empire ? — Whether the em- 
perors of Austria and Russia, the king of promise-breakers and 
Prussia, and divers others equally sacred and equally legitimate 
rod-bearers, are withheld from abdicating by f sense and piety T 
Whether George Washington — ' Stop there, he was no legiti- 
' mate' — True; consequently i sense and piety told him to 
resign the sway of power, and he did so. f Infamy indeed 1 
Are you then serious in your declaration, that should it please 
his most gracious Majesty, f a man of sense and piety '/ ' to 
' lay down the gaudy bauble of a diadem ' lined' as it is 
* with pungent thorns to lacerate the temples of the Royal 
' wearer/ — ' a diadem, 1 moreover, 'which requires a combina- 
' tion of uncommon talents and virtues, for any 
' man to wear with honor/ — he would cover himself with 
j infamy t ' Verily, parson, you are now floundering in all \ the 
majesty of mud/ and I am at a loss for the means of your puri- 
fication. 

An ironical joke enlivens the next sally of your observation, 
which 1 must needs quote for the reader's refreshment: ' Pri- 
' vacy he can never know/ — as if the fact of the time did not 
stare you in the face with an exclamation a la Wordsworth — 

God help thee, silly one!— 

and exhibit our good King in the fullest enjoyment of this de- 
sirable estate of human existence. Is there a private gentle- 
man in the land more private? — name him, Master Parson. 
You proceed to tell us, how c policy of State and ' policy of 
l . Church/ and ' inferior politics/ interfere with the royal li- 
berty in matrimonial matters ; and that ' domestic infelicity is 
'the inevitable result.' What! notwithstanding the Arch- 
bishop's blessing, and the prayers of ' our Church !' — and are 
you, Sir, prepared to say that the marriage of George the 
Third was a term of connubial hate and misery? Surely this 
were a strange mode of defending such a son by reflecting thus 
on such a father ! Well may you cry, ' From his cradle he is 
' nursed in flatteries :' for to his dying hour he shall never 
want such poison, while morality-mongers like yourself can 



w 

thus gloss over a course of action which merits a far different 

handling. Go to, ye Pharisees ! Hypocrites ! — 

You must be purged too;— your sins are rank ; 
You are attaint with faults and perjury. 

To look no farther, take the following as damning proof of the 
necessity of church-reformation. ' In the sight of God, per- 

* haps, the sin of the husband, who should be the 

J GUIDE AND GUARD OF HIS WIFE, IS NOT MORE EX- 

I cusable, than the frailties of the weaker vessel:' ' Art 
thou a churchman' and sendest forth such abominable pallia- 
tives as this \ perhaps ! ! ! Patience attend me ! — here is ' a 

* minister of the sanctuary,' ' a constituted guardian of morals/ 
an abhoner of radicalism, — in brief here is a Manchester par- 
son, (and having said this I have certainly attained the climax 
of character,) who, although in advanced years, has not been 
able to satisfy himself whether adultery in man — in a ' hus- 
1 band — guide and guard' of the weaker party — is more ex- 
cusable than in woman — in a ( wife— the weaker vessel !' Talk 
indeed of ' pure ignorance with scarcely three grains of sense !' 
■ — why this is said e pure ignorance' void of all sense, ' with 
1 three grains' — if not thirty — of nonsense superadded ! You 
then observe, ' yet are they not so ?ioxious and perilous to a 
' nation's welfare.' This I flatly deny ; twist and turn it as 
you may, vices of equal magnitude must bring in the end equal 
injury on mankind. The laws of God regard adultery in man as 
great a crime at least as in woman, and unless you are prepared 
to maintain that those laws are unjust, it is worse than mere 
folly to set up this sin as more mischievous in the wife than in 
the husband. You add, — * Twenty natural children of the So- 
' vereign cannot endanger the legitimate succession, whereas &ne 
£ supposititious child fathered upon him, may bathe the land in 
' blood.' Yes, and ' may not *■ twenty natural children bathe 
1 the land in blood ' twenty times over ? Gramercy, go to Dame 
History, and ask her the question else. l One supposititious 
1 child ;' — supposititious fiddlestick ! Instead of the fish beneath, 
you are catching flies on the surface of the water. It seems 
you think very little iudeed of adultery in your own sex, but is 



68 

it not from thence alone that adultery in the other is generated ? 
Is not the adulterer sowing the seed for the harvest of sin, and 
poisoning the fountains of social health in every direction ? But 
you have not done : i Whatever injuries a nation's morals may 
' receive from the bold sins'— (' mark you his absolute* 
bold?— ) f of her Sovereign, can never weigh against the 

* corruption of her sex, and the secret yet daring infamy of a 
' Queen, whether convicted or only suspected'!!! 
Good God ! So then you, Parson Home, really do aver that the 
actual sins, aye the ' bold sins' the public — the avowed — 
the shameless infamies of the husband, are venial — compared 
with the 'suspected' the ' only suspected' sins of the 
wife ! O rare absolute wisdom ! What a loss to Doctors 
Commons, that you had not taken lessons of Slop and set up 
for a Civilian ! Your talents had won you a business which 
said Doctor has won not, and the goddess had pointed you out 
to the youth of our country in the words of the poet, — 

* Melville' the scourge of grammar, mark with awe ; 
Nor less revere him — blunderbuss of law ! 

In page 41, occurs the following: e If the King of Eng- 

* land has offended against the King Eternal, by the 
' violations of his laws. He alone is entitled to claim thefor- 
'feit' And to this I answer, it is 

an odious, damned lie ; 

Upon my soul, a lie,— a wicked lie. 

To waive the straane apposition of royalty thus introduced, let 
me inquire of you, — Were a King, in a single instance, to com- 
mit murder in cold blood and of malice prepense, ought he to 
be left untouched by human laws ? And if you answer (as I pre- 
sume you would) in the affirmative, allow me then to ask — 
Were a king to commit such murder in ten thousand instances, 
ought he to escape human judgment?— Now, Sir, shall we com- 
mit to the flames, our bibles and our constitutional records, 
or shall we burn your * moral and political crisis ?' 
The reader has had many specimens of your theological 
fantasies, but here is another too perfect to be passed over. 



69 

i A deadly chalice, mingled by human malice with 
$ every poisonous ingredient y yet the retributive cup 
'of the Almighty, is now forced on the lips of England's 
\ King; and if not even hope remain in Pandora's fatal 
1 box; health, 1 humbly trust, will be found in a cup whose 
I noxious qualities are corrected by God's mercy and 
■ grace.' Why, surely this is on the very brink of the ridi- 
culous. — It is 'human malice' first, and then 'the cup of the 
.Almighty, 1 — it is of ' noxious qualities/ and ' is forced ' on 
the royal lips, — then f. it is corrected,' 8fc. I look in vain for the 
radical quantum — the ' three grains of sense' in this ex- 
traordinary description ; but I suppose it is the real genuine 
Lundyfoot of orthodoxy ; and as such — being no snuff- 
fancier — I leave it. 

You ask, — % what eulogy shall Europe pass on Earl Grey 
f and Mr. Alderman Wood T Any child in the streets, how- 
ever ' ignorant arid ill-informed, 1 could supply this vacuum in 
the regions of your knowledge ; but to save you the trouble of 
so singular an inquiry, I will tell you in few words, — that amid 
many faithless, they have proved themselves faithful, — they have 
been tried in the balance, and have not been found wanting, — 
they have fought the good fight, — have protected the father- 
less and the widow, — 

have held l their' course, blameless and pure, — 

And such is 'their' renown! 
Hope flattered me that I had done with your doctrinals, but 
here you are again to ' push us from our stools/ and ' fright 
our isle from her propriety/ * Lords and Gentlemen, the 
f unexampled zoickedness of our nation, has, by the just 
.'judgment of God, encompassed our King, our Lords, 
' our Commons, icith dangers ; and with the blessing of our 
'paternal corrector, we must extricate them' at 
* every peril, or perish with them. 1 f Why what, o'devil's 
name/ Parson, ' callst thou this/ if it is not rank rebellion 
against heaven ? 

O madness! pride! impiety! 

And then follows your profoundly-wise prescription for the 



70 

Solvation of the three estates: * Let the Sovereign, his Minis- 
i ters, and the mitred Prelates of the realm, ' call a fast, and 
' proclaim a solemn assembly, and all the Priests weep between 
' the porch and the altar.' At that altar, let Government 
1 and Opposition, and all the people lie in prostrate adoration, 
1 and let the priest say — a prayer too long for insertion here, but 
from which the following sample of tender mercy is taken : 

* COMMISSION THE DESTROYING ANGEL TO GO FORTH, 
< TO SELECT THY VICTIMS, AND TO EXTERMINATE 

' England's foes!' ' Mass and well said,' meek-hearted 
Minister-evangelical! — and so much, gentle English Chris- 
tian reader, for the reveries of a bloody-minded superstition ! 
The Spartans exhibited their slaves hi all the nakedness and 
deformity of drunkenness, to deter their children by such strik- 
ing examples from the commission of the like bestiality ; — -and, 
to warn the unthinking and unwary, of the utter discrepancy 
between the sobriety of the doctrines of Jesus, and the intoxi- 
cation of such teaching and preaching as daily offend against 
the gospel of peace, — I have extracted these reeling, contra- 
dictory, and confused unintelligibilities, these striking illustra- 
tions of the ' delirious dreams' the wild ravings of the author 
of the volume before me. Religion, pure and undented before 
God, — to be loved, and cherished, and prized before all things, 
needs but to be seen ; so bigotry, — ignorant, blind, and brutal 
— requires but simple exposure, to be scorned, detested, and 
shunned. It has been admirably observed by the ' mitred 
' Prelate,' Howley, that 'prostration of the understanding and 
will, are indispensable to proficiency in Christian instruction !' 
Let not this hint be lost upon us, — one may run and read its 
drift, as clearly as we can read the sun sparkling in the noon- 
day. Happily we have not so learned Christ ; — -He has called 
upon us to ' search the Scriptures/ to < try all things/ to 
' hold to that which is good f and this, ' with the blessing of 
1 our paternal corrector and instructor, we will endeavour to 
accomplish, despite the open threats of the Pope of Rome, or 
the more wily manoeuvring of the Pope of London. God gave 
us reason for the wisest of purposes ; and when a man, be he 



71 

bishop or beef-eater— curate or cobbler, attempts to wheedle us 
away from that beacon of light and truth, — it is the bounden 
duty of every rational being, to evidence at once — his contempt 
for the trapsticks and limetwigs of sophistry, his ability to defeat 
the craft and expound the cant of hypocrisy, and his power 
to repel every attack of the enemies of freedom and know- 
ledge. 

Your postscript contains agreeable news ; and if it gives the 
lie to some of your preceding predications, I cannot regard it 
as the less valuable. You tell us, — { infidelity has made fearful 
i inroad upon the morals of the lower classes f and of course 
left unscathed the morals of ' high? life, in this age of graduating 
classification. There is some comfort in this, as we have still 
' a remnant left' for the day of tribulation ; and it is an addi- 
tional gratification to hear, that f — the sober religion of the Re- 
formation is greatly spread AMONGST OUR OWN CLERGY, 
f the middle, and even the higher classes 1 .' Said c higher 
f classes,' as well as ' our own clergy,' are certainly very much 
obliged to you for this friendly annunciation of their recent 
acquisition, — especially the former, as it seems to have come 
over your senses like the voice of wonder, that ' sober religion 
should ever flourish in the garden of aristocracy. A radical 
friend inquires, whether ' sober religion is not at this moment 
a very scarce article in the clerical and patrician market ? I 
can only answer that I see not much difference since your 
noticed arrivals and supply. 

It now only remains for me to return to the sketch you have 
guardedly and advisedly drawn of yourself in pp. 32, 33. 
Having taken such extraordinary liberties with the characters 
of other individuals, you are evidently and not without reason 
afraid, that your own motives should be suspected ; it seems 
natural, therefore, you should cast about and see that your own 
quarters are secure, or at least well fenced by the palisadoes of 
assertion. In page 7, you had called yourself ' an obscure in- 
dividual i unconnected with the State;' (as if every Church-of- 
England priest was not closely linked with the government, — in 
which sense alone the word f State' has any meaning here,) * a 



72' 

* dying man, who has nothing to hope or fear on earth.' At p. 
33, you proceed, — * Nor Church nor State hath ever served 
( him. 7 He never asked nor expected reward.* i He desires no 

* human remuneration, and will accept of none. 9 ' The thirty- 
( five years of his ministry have never cost Church or State, 

* on an average, more than 100/. per annum ; an income 

* which has never afforded himself and family the decen" 

* cies of his humble station. He is old and ready to die? 
A sense of justice towards my opponent required this tran- 
scription, and I leave it in the assurance, that it will have 
its due weight with our readers ; but, when he says, ' on the 

* zvhole, he is as free from suspicion of corrupt motive as man 
c can well be,' — I must observe, that the sentence drops from 
his lips with little grace and less modesty ; it is neither * blush- 
1 ing nor retiring.' I should be loth, Rev. Sir, to disturb 
jour self-complacency, but that its appearance in its present 
sentimental raiment, is calculated, in my humble opinion, to 
mislead ' the ignorant,' to confound the ' ill-informed,' to 
countenance superstition, to bolster up the pretensions of 
tyranny ' temporal and spiritual/ and to do special mischief to 
the great and good cause of civil and religious liberty. I 
would, therefore, most feelingly implore you to leave off this 
unhappy trick of scribbling on subjects far out of the depth of 
your understanding. Retire within the pale of your domestic 
quiet ; let not the ripple now playing on the waters of popu- 
lar opinion, affect your tranquillity ; compose your spirits, and 
endeavour to divest your religious calling of party-politics. 
For mental relaxation and amusement, — (demanded equally by 
your years, and the exact performance of those duties to 
which you are summoned by your profession,) — allow me to 
.refer you, since 'policy of State' is your hobby, to Milton 
and Locke— to Marvell and Sydney. But, above all, let me 
Jbeseech you to simplify your doctrinal conceptions: let the 
' simplicity that is in Jesus' content you : run not after false 
prophets, after the Jacks o' lantern that flit about the moras- 
ses of religion : relinquish to those, who ' teach rebellion from 
6 the bible/ the heavy machinery of Manes, and the vi- 



73 

sionary complications of Zoroaster, and confine yourself to 
? the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth :' — I may 
then hail, with delight, the promised advent of a day not far 
off, when you shall acknowledge the absolute wisdom of this 
my humble recommendation. Time, that brings truth to light, 
in the last few ' little months' must have done much towards 
correcting your old opinions on many matters, — for a lesson has 
been read to you and the like, which, — if you have any spark 
of understanding — cannot be lost on your future conduct. 

To conclude: were I inclined to play the e Daniel,' and to 
offer an explication of ' the signs' of the times — to ' decipher 
* our mystic character, 7 1 should say, Reform 'is a promi- 
1 nent letter of the writing, and the experience of all ages 
' has recorded the' fiat ' of common sense,' — 

VOX POPULI— VOX DEI ! 

Should you think well to step again into the field, I shall be 
found at your service. No life-hunter — 1 would fight with my 
pen for all weapon ; and if a few goose-quills are wasted in 
the contest, it shall never be charged against me, that I ad- 
vocated the shedding of blood. There are enow, both in * our 
' Church,' and out of it, most laudably engaged in that Chris- 
tian occupation. But, I have done. Allow me, at parting, to 
wish you health and more comfortable opinions : commend me 
to your townsmen as a friend and a well-wisher ; and be pleased 
to think not the less worthily of me, in that I subscribe myself* 

Reverend Sir, 
ARISTARCHUS ANTI-HORNEUS. 



Johu M'Creery, Tooks-Court, 
Chancery-Lane, London. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 661 465 1 



